D  D 


UC-NRLF 


B   H   SD7   DIS 


GIFT  OF 


GIFT 
I^OV  20    1918 


GERMANY'S  MOST 

SUCCESSFUL 

HOAX 


How  Germany  .Imposed  Upon  the  World  the 
Myth  of  her  Supremacy  in  Social  Progress,  In- 
dustry and  Invention,  and  the  Arts  and  Sciences 


Germany's  Boasts  vs.  The  Facts 


Behind  the  Camouflage  of  a  Social  Paradise 
Poverty  and  Indigence  Abounded.  "Kultur" 
Revealed  in  Enslavement  of  Underpaid 
Workers,  Appalling  Rate  of  Infant  Mortality 
and  Child  Suicides,  and  Misery  of  Out- 
cast Aged  Poor.  German  Achievements 
in  Industry  and  Science  Based  on  the  Rob- 
bery of  the  Inventions  and  Discoveries  of 
Other  Nations.,  ,In  Her  Claims  to  Pre- 
eminence vn  A,rt  :aad,  .Literature  "Germany 
Presented  the  Spiectacle"  of  the  Belly-god 
Seeking,  to    Filoh    thel.ajure)8    of    Apollo" 


hy 
RALPH  M.  EASLEY 

1918 


rV 


^1/ 


A 


GERMANY'S  MOST  SUCCESSFUL  HOAX 


By  Ralph  M.  Easley 


While  Germany  was  preparing  armies  and  manufacturing 
cannon  for  her  intended  onslaught  for  world  dominion  she  was 
engaged  at  the  same  time  in  a  ''peaceful  oifensive"  designed  to 
win  from  America  an  overwhelming  and  subservient  admira- 
tion and  esteem  which  should  disarm  our  indignation  and  render 
us  inert  when  the  time  for  her  first  blow  came.  To  camouflage 
her  baleful  preparations  and  sinister  intentions,  Germany  dur- 
ing those  years  presented  herself  as  a  nation,  which  by  industry, 
thrift  and  the  practice  of  homely  virtues,  had  not  only  become 
prosperous  in  peaceful  industry  but  had  evolved  a  social  paradise 
for  the  working  classes.  A  benefactor  among  the  nations,  seek- 
ing only  to  wipe  out  disease  and  all  the  ills  of  mankind,  Germany 
exploited  her  leadership  in  science,  medicine,  inventions,  in  in- 
dustry and  commerce,  in  the  uplift  of  the  working  classes  and 
the  elimination  of  poverty.  In  the  arts,  she  arrogated  to  herself 
the  highest  place  among  the  muses.  Until  the  world  was  stunned 
by  her  treacherous  blow  to  Belgium  all  that  Germany  claimed 
(vas  taken  at  its  face  value.  Germany  had  herself  made  the 
phrase  ** German  honesty'^  an  axiom.  None  questioned  her 
most  sweeping  claims;  acceptance  became  tacit.  During  those 
unsuspecting  days  Germany  accomplished  her  supreme  achieve- 
ment— the  imposition  upon  the  world  of  the  most  colossal  fake 
in  history. 

The  world,  without  knowing  very  much  about  it,  swallowed 
the  boast  that  Germany  was  ''over  all"  in  music,  art  and 
literature ;  that  she  had  become  the  saviour  of  mankind  from  the 
afflictions  of  disease  by  her  discoveries  in  bacteriology  and  medi- 
cine; that  she  was  the  A-number-one  object  lesson  in  industrial 
economy,  and  was  indeed  the  fairy  godmother  of  the  nations 
who,  by  a  wave  of  her  Prussian  wand,  had  banished  the  immemo- 
rial ills  of  the  hitherto  downtrodden  laboring  classes.  Where  it 
came  to  fostering  the  gracious  arts,  on  what  Germany  reported 
and  her  fatuous  admirers  furthered,  the  Hohenzollern  autocracy 
made  the  ducal  patrons  of  Milan  appear  as  "pikers."  In  Ger- 
many, we  were  told,  genius  was  recognized  and  the  poet  was 
peer  to  the  peers ;  only  in  America  had  literature  and  art  become 
commercial,  so  that  the  poets  and  writers  who  refused  to  sell 
themselves  to  the  capitalistic  magazines  were  compelled  to  live 
in  indigency.  American  education  was  a  poor  thing  at  best, 
while  German  universities  were  the  final  seat  of  learning — an 
idea  assiduously  fostered   by   the   German   University   League, 


383543 


Prof.  Hugo  Muensterberg  and  by  little  American  professors  who 
yearned  for  an  exchange-professorship  in  some  German  institu- 
tion. What  most  impressed  the  working  classes  of  America — 
whom  Germany  most  wanted  to  alienate  from  their  own  Gov- 
ernment and  render  discontented — was  the  myth  that  German 
workers,  alone  favored  among  all  the  workers  of  the  world,  en- 
joyed millenially  ideal  conditions  of  working  and  living.  While 
the  Teuton  propaganda  boasting  Germany's  supremacy  in  cul- 
ture, education,  etcetera,  was  abetted  by  such  American  admirers 
as  Prof.  John  W.  Burgess,  Dr.  Ernest  Flagg  Henderson  and 
George  Sylvester  Viereck,  the  social  progress  myth  was  indus- 
triously and  zealously  carried  on  by  such  writers  as  Fred.  C. 
Howe,  Dr.  Roger  W.  Babson  and  Morris  Hillquit.  Where  these 
gentry  left  off,  Germany's  publicity  game  of  deception  after  the 
outbreak  of  the  war  was  still  furthered  by  Dr.  Bernhard  Dern- 
burg,  Dr.  William  Bayard  Hale,  Dr.  Edward  A.  Rumely,  Jere- 
miah 0  'Leary,  and  others  now  in  unsavory  repute. 

For  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century — and  while  thousands  of 
Germans  fled  to  other  countries  to  find  new  homes — the  American 
people  have  been  told  that  the  German  masses  were  well  fed  and 
happy,  that  from  infancy  to  old  age  they  were  solicitously  cared 
for  by  a  fatherly  government,  that  workers  enjoyed  shorter 
hours  and  higher  pay  than  those  of  other  countries,  that  they 
had  picturesque  homes,  cheap  food  in  plenty.  According  to  the 
reports,  in  Germany  there  was  no  poverty,  slums  did  not  exist, 
German  babies  were  provided  with  pasteurized  milk  and  cared 
for  in  krippen  and  clinics,  and  in  sere  old  age,  instead  of  poverty 
or  the  almhouse,  the  happy  Germans  enjoyed  ease,  comfort  and 
freedom  from  worry  through  the  marvellous  German  system  of 
pensions. 

In  fact,  so  delightful  were  the  living  conditions  of  the  masses 
of  German  workers  before  the  war,  as  presented  by  various 
paid  and  unpaid  promoters  of  German  propaganda,  includ- 
ing certain  American  sociological  ''experts,"  that  many 
people  in  this  country  pined  for  the  paradise  provided  by 
the  Kaiser  for  his  devoted  subjects.  Especially  were  Socialist 
leaders,  whose  political  philosophy  came  from  Germany  and  who 
opposed  our  going  to  war  with  Germany,  outspoken  in  the  belief 
that  the  German  system  was  better  than  our  own.  J.  0.  Bentall, 
former  Socialist  candidate  for  Governor  of  Minnesota  (later 
found  guilty  by  a  jury  in  the  Federal  court  of  Minneapolis  of 
violating  the  espionage  act,  and  also  under  sentence  for  obstruct- 
ing the  draft),  declared  in  effect  in  a  public  speech:  ''What  if 
the  Germans  come  over  and  rule  us?  What  do  we  care  who 
governs  us  so  long  as  we  are  well  fed  and  happy?" 

Of  the  various  kinds  of  German  propaganda  which  have  been 
sprung  upon  the  world  at  a  cost  of  millions  of  dollars,  none  was 
so  successful  as  this.  It  served  to  cloak  the  sinister  purposes 
of  the  Imperial  German  Government.  It  enlisted  the  regard  of 
the  working  classes  and  intellectuals  of  other  nations.    It  caused 


many  people,  after  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  to  temporize  for 
Germany,  and  served  to  allay  the  righteous  indignation  and 
horror  aroused  by  the  bestial  atrocities  of  her  military  hordes. 

The  system  which  has  been  worked  out  in  Germany  is  what 
the  German  autocracy  by  force  of  might  would  impose  upon  the 
people  of  the  world.  Should  it  be  desired  with  outstretched  armg 
as  a  blessing  for  all  mankind?  The  Allies  have  given  their 
answer,  and  America  has  given  her  answer.  Yet  so  long- 
continued  and  persistent  was  the  German  propaganda,  that  many 
Americans  are  still  in  ignorance  of  the  actual  facts  concerning 
conditions  in  Germany.  When  they  realize  what  actually  existed 
they  will  better  understand  why  the  peoples  of  the  world  must 
resist  the  thing  called  Prussianism  with  force  to  the  utmost. 

Extolled  Soclvl  InsuRxVnce  and  Farm  Loan  System  a  Farce. 

What  are  the  facts  back  of  these  claims  for  superior  working, 
social,  and  economic  conditions  in  Germany?  The  League  for 
National  Unity  undertook  to  assemble  the  facts  regarding  these 
conditions  up  to  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  These  facts,  drawn 
from  official  German  documents  and  other  authoritative  sources, 
have  been  available  at  any  time  in  our  public  libraries  to  the 
** social  reformers"  who  have  so  misled  the  American  people  on 
these  matters.  The  studies  were  prepared  for  the  League  by 
Gustavus  Myers,  the  well-known  research  expert  and  historian. 
They  deal  with  the  following  topics : 

Oppression  of  the  farmers. 

Underpaid  workers. 

Industrial  enslavement  of  women  and  children. 

Shocking  housing  conditions. 

Chronic  underfeeding  and  great  infant  mortality. 

The  large  extent  of  pauperism. 

Counterfeit  social  insurance. 

The  facts  and  figures  quoted  by  me  in  this  article  are  based 
on  Mr.  Myers 's  report.    Now  let  us  see  what  they  reveal : 

That  conditions  under  which  workers  and  farmers  in  Germany 
lived  and  worked  were  intolerable  in  the  extreme;  that  women 
and  children  worked  like  beasts  of  burden  on  farms  and  in  the 
cities;  that  sweatshops  abounded;  that  the  majority  of  workers 
lived  in  foul,  wretched  tenements;  that  they  suffered  from  lack 
of  food  and  fuel,  and  labored  for  stretches  of  hours  unparalleled 
in  other  countries  for  starvation  wages. 

As  for  the  so-called  social  insurance  laws,  what  did  they 
amount  to  ?  According  to  the  Amtliche  Naehrichten  des  Reichs- 
Versicherung-Amt,  Berlin,  the  average  invalidity  pension  in 
1913  was  $46.51  a  year — less  than  $1  a  week.  The  average 
sickness  pension  was  $48.45  a  year — also  less  than  $1  a  week. 


The  average  old-age  pension  was  $39.75  a  year — about  76  cents 
a  week.  The  average  widow's  and  widower's  pension  v/as  $18.49 
a  year — about  35  cents  a  week.  The  average  widow's  siekaess 
pension  was  $18.59  a  year  and  the  average  orphan's  pension 
$19.07  a  year.  These  were  the  pensions  in  a  country  where  the 
poorest  paid  adult,  living  in  the  lowest  possible  scale,  needed  at 
least  $140  to  $155  a  year  for  the  cost  of  the  barest  subsistence. 

The  American  press  agents  of  Teutonic  superiority  have  ex- 
tolled the  various  social  reform  measures,  particularly  the  pro- 
visions for  giving  financial  credit  to  small  farmers.  In  the 
United  States  the  Federal  Farm  Loan  Act  operates  to  the  benefit 
of  small  farmers  who  actually  till  the  soil,  and  eliminates  ab- 
sentee landlords.  Loans  from  $100  to  $10,000  are  made  on  land 
security  and  improvements,  from  five  to  forty  years,  repayable 
on  easy  terms  and  at  a  low  rate  of  interest.  From  the  time 
the  Federal  Farm  Loan  Act  was  put  into  operation  up  to  Dec. 
1,  1917,  in  less  than  six  months,  $30,000,000  was  loaned.  Yet 
these  very  American  farmers  have  been  told  that  the  German 
Government  is  much  more  generous.    But  is  this  so  ? 

Dr.  Kapp  Konigsberg,  General  Director  of  the  Prussian 
Landschaften — the  Mutual  Farm  Loan  Associations — testifying 
before  a  visiting  commission  in  1912,  admitted  that  the  systems 
of  loans  on  landed  property  had  benefited  chiefly  the  landown- 
ing aristocracy. 

*'0f  the  estates,"  he  testified,  "which  exceed  100  hectares 
(a  hectare  is  not  quite  2^^  acres)  66.3  per  cent,  have  availed 
themselves  of  landschaft  loans;  the  corresponding  proportion  in 
the  case  of  peasant  holdings  is  only  13.5  per  cent. ' ' 

The  meaning  of  this  is  clear  when  it  is  explained  that  in 
Germany  2,084,000  farm  holdings  are  under  li^  acres,  1,294,449 
farm  holdings  are  from  li/4  to  5  acres,  1,006,277  farm  holdings 
from  5  to  12l^  acres,  and  1,065,539  farm  holdings  from  12% 
to  50  acres.  The  Landwirtschaftliche  Betriebsstatistik,  Part  2-B, 
published  by  the  Imperial  Statistical  Office,  Berlin,  1912,  fur- 
ther shows  that  while  the  millions  of  peasant  farmers  have  only 
tiny  farms,  23,566  Junkers — feudal  barons  or  magnate  farmers 
— own  nearly  25,000,000  acres,  embraced  in  estates  of  250  to 
500  acres'and  more.  Of  the  farms  in  Germany,  36.3  per  cent, 
are  under  I14  acres,  22.6  per  cent.  I14  to  5  acres,  17.5  per  cent. 
5  to  12  acres,  18.6  per  cent.  12i/^  to  50  acres,  4.6  per  cent.  50 
to  250  acres,  0.2  per  cent.  250  to  500  acres,  and  0.2  per  cent. 
500  acres  and  over. 

It  can  therefore  be  seen  what  an  insignificant  proportion 
of  the  small  farmers  have  received  the  aid  of  loans  from  these 
Mutual  Farm  Loan  Associations.  In  their  inception  they  were 
meant  for  the  landed  aristocrats,  and  have  remained  so. 

Much  praise  has  been  accorded  the  annuity  banks  of  Ger- 
many by  infatuated  admirers  of  the  paternal  Prussian  system. 
To  what  extent  have  these  banks  benefited  small  farmers? 
They  were  established  in  1850,  and  enlarged  in  functions  later 


by  legislation.  They  have  served,  in  the  words  of  Dr.  Augsbin 
of  Berlin  '*in  facilitating  the  redemption  of  old  servitudes  en- 
cumbering the  lands  of  peasants,  so  as  to  enable  the  peasant 
farmer  to  buy  off  the  feudal  dues  incumbering  his  land. '  *  These 
banks  issue  annuity  bonds,  guaranteed  by  the  Prussian  Govern- 
ment, which  run  from  fifty  to  sixty  years,  and  by  1909  the 
amount  issued  was  more  than  500,000,000  marks.  Thus  the 
peasants  of  Germany  are  compelled  to  pay  off  dues  for  feudal 
impositions  of  five  centuries  ago. 

The  vast  proportion  of  farms  are  so  small  that  the  farmers 
cannot  afford  machinery,  and  instead  use  the  labor  of  women 
and  children.  Does  one  see  women  and  children  hitched  with 
oxen  and  dogs,  drawing  plows  and  carts,  in  the  United  States? 
''In  Germany,"  reported  F.  J.  H.  von  Engelken,  (President  of 
the  Federal  Farm  Loan  Bank  of  Columbia,  S.  C.,)  member  of  a 
visiting  American  commission,  ''the  greater  proportion  of  the 
farm  work  is  done  by  women.  It  is  a  common  sight  to  see  women 
hoeing  or  pitching  hay  or  spreading  manure."  And  what  were 
the  generous  emoluments  in  prosperous,  happy  Germany?  Ac- 
cording to  testimony  given  on  farm  wages  in  1912  a  woman 
farm  laborer  earned  from  38  to  48  cents  a  day,  and  children 
over  12  years  got  24  cents  a  day,  without  board.  Male  farm 
labor  got  72  cents  a  day. 

The  happy  farmers  of  Germany!  The  demeaning  caste  sys- 
tem which  sharply  defines  a  peasant  in  Germany  is  surpassed 
in  rigidity  perhaps  only  in  India. 

The  peasant  farmer  is  sharply  defined  in  a  class  by  himself. 
In  the  United  States  every  agriculturist,  whether  proprietary 
farmer,  tenant  farmer  or  farm  laborer,  has  the  equal  right  to 
vote.  But  in  Germany  only  farmers  (and  many  farmers  are 
renters)  who  pay  taxes  are  allowed  to  vote,  and  even  they  are 
only  allowed  to  vote  for  the  Reichstag,  which  is  merely  a  debating 
society.  Women  have  no  vote.  A  peasant  the  little  farmer  is, 
and  he  stays  a  peasant. 

Educational  System  Makes  Germans  Vassals  from 
Childhood. 

The  educational  system  is  so  devised  that,  generation  after 
generation,  the  child  is  educated  so  that  he  will  remain  in  the 
station  of  life  in  which  he  was  born.  The  Kaiser's  Government 
sees  well  to  it  that  the  child's  mind  and  movements  are  molded 
for  uses  the  autocracy  wants  to  make  of  it  in  its  militaristic 
and  intrenched  caste  system.  The  Junkers  believe  in  the  divine 
rights  of  kings,  and  lording  it  as  they  do  over  the  peasants, 
use  the  so-called  educational  system  to  fill  the  peasants'  minds 
with  that  doctrine. 

The  entire  educational  system  of  Germany  is  designed  to 
keep  the  people  vassals  of  the  Junker  autocracy.  Prof.  Thomas 
Alexander,  who  spent  many  years  studying  the  Prussian  schools, 
describes  them  thus: 


"The  Volkschulen  (people's  schools)  in  Germany  are,  there- 
fore, for  the  very  large  underclass.  Class  lines  are  very  marked, 
and  those  lower  orders  of  society  which  send  their  children  to 
the  Volkschulen  very  rarely  ever  think  of  breaking  over  into 
the  forbidden  fields.  There  is,  therefore,  a  marked  difference 
in  the  quality  of  pupils  in  the  upper  schools  and  those  of  the 
lower.  The  lower  classes  unconsciously  admit  their  inferiority 
in  their  attitude  to  the  ruling  ten  thousand,  and  they  have  main- 
tained this  attitude  for  so  long,  that  they  are  now  really  inferior, 
mentally,  morally  and  physically. 

''The  first  great  aim  of  German  elementary  education  is  the 
production  of  an. efficient  German  citizen  *  *  *  who  is  ready 
and  willing  to  take  his  place  in  that  part  of  the  social  order 
to  which  he  belongs. 

"The  second  aim  is  the  *  *  *  need  of  producing  in  large 
numbers  a  type  of  citizenship  easily  amenable  to  the  dictates 
of  hureaucratic  officialdom.  This  under  class  is  composed  of 
the  peasants,  small  tradesmen,  subordinate  officials,  artisans  and 
other  laboring  classes,  together  comprising  fully  ninety  per  cent 
of  the  total  population  *  *  *  The  great  mass  have  been  molded 
and  cast  in  one  die — they  think  alike,  they  act  alike.  What 
they  think  and  do  is  determined  by  the  leaders  of  the  nation. 
This  is  accomplished  by  the  Volkschulen  *  *  *  for  the  masses 
*  *  *  respond  as  a  man  to  the  slightest  suggestion  of  au- 
thority." 

That  "authority"  is,  of  course,  the  HohenzoUern  autocracy, 
with  its  mainstays,  the  Junkers  and  the  Bureaucracy.  The  mass 
of  the  German  people  are  brought  up  and  taught  to  be  their 
dupes. 

As  long  ago  as  1890  the  Kaiser  in  a  public  speech  at  the 
Berlin  Conference  on  Secondary  Education  sneered  at  "an  over 
production  of  a  highly  educated  people,"  declared  that  "the 
gentlemen  who  write  for  the  press  are  a  danger  to  us,"  and 
concluded  with  habitual  emphasis  on  the  autocractic  I :  "I  will 
therefore  approve  the  foundation  of  no  more  such  schools  in 
the  future  unless  their  necessity  can  be  proved.  We  have  enough 
of  them  already. ' '  The  Kaiser  wanted  no  independent,  thinking 
people;  a  submissive  mass  was  what  the  military  machine  de- 
manded and  meant  to  have;  education  was  to  be  reserved  as 
much  as  possible  for  the  privileged  castes. 

The  debauchment,  by  this  system  of  education,  of  an  entire 
people  from  their  childhood  accounts  for  the  phenomenal  sub- 
missiveness  of  the  Germans  to  their  rulers  and  their  resignation 
to  the  most  intolerable  oppressions.  Their  very  virtue  of  in- 
dustriousness  has  been  perverted  by  their  masters  into  tacit 
slavery. 

In  the  United  States  the  ten-hour  workday  was  established 
in  1840  and  the  eight-hour  workday  received  Congressional 
sanction  in  1869.  Up  to  the  very  beginning  of  the  war  the 
general  workday  for  highly  skilled  trades  in  Germany  was  fif ty- 

6 


seven  to  sixty  hours  a  week  and  in  other  trades  twelve  to 
fourteen  hours  a  day.  The  average  usual  hours  for  labor,  ac- 
cording to  the  replies  of  German  employers  to  the  British  Board 
of  Trade  Inquiry,  in  1908  were:  Fifty-four  hours  for  com- 
positors; 59  hours  in  the  building  trades;  591/2  hours  in  the 
engineering  trades.  By  comparison,  hours  of  labor  in  Germany 
were  8  to  12  per  cent,  higher  than  in  England  and  10  to  34 
per  cent,  higher  than  in  the  United  States. 

As  for  those  reported  high  wages,  we  have  the  facts  given 
by  Dr.  R.  R.  Kucznski,  director  of  the  municipal  statistical 
office  of  Schoeneberg,  who  was  commissioned  by  the  German 
Imperial  Treasury  Department  to  prepare  a  memorial.  In  1907 
the  following  wages  prevailed  in  the  prosperous  Fatherland : 

Miners,  hard  coal  mines,  an  average  of  $334  a  year. 

Miners,  soft  coal  mines,  an  average  of  $297  a  year. 

Workers  in  salt  mines  and  works,  an  average  of  $309  a  year. 

Miners  in  copper  mines,  an  averacre  of  $271  a  year. 

Miners  in  iron  mines,  an  average  of  $266  a  year. 

Masons,  $1.26  to  $1.61  a  day. 

Carpenters,  $1.24  to  $1.61  a  day. 

Plumbers,  gas  fitters,  and  steam  fitters,  $1.13  to  $1.39  a  day. 

Stonecutters,  $1.62  to  $1.72  a  day. 

Krupp  plant,  at  Essen,  average  daily  earnings,  $1.27. 

Journeymen  printers,  $6.55  to  $7.44  a  week. 

Skilled  State  railway  shopworkers,  86  cents  to  $1.02  a  day. 

Engineers,  conductors,  &c..  State  railway,  70  cents  a  day. 

Artisans  and  mechanics,  State  railway,  98  cents  to  $1.09  a 
day. 

Employes,  Prussian-Hessian  State  railway,  average  76  cents 
a  day. 

Able-bodied  seamen,  Baltic  and  North  Sea,  average  $15.18  a 
month. 

This  list  includes  skilled  men  only.  Other  kinds  of  workers 
in  these  different  industries  received,  of  course,  much  less  than 
the  skilled.  An  investigation  at  the  same  time  made  by  the 
Federation  of  German  Woodworkers — an  industry  employing 
nearly  800,000  persons — disclosed  that  the  average  weekly  labor 
hours  of  joiners,  turners,  brush  and  basket  makers,  wheelwrights, 
wooden-shoe  makers,  box  and  toy  makers,  were  57  hours. 

The  average  weekly  earnings  of  adult  males  were  $5.90  a 
week. 

Cost  of  Living  Exceeded  Wage  Income. 

According  to  a  summary  sent  out  by  the  German  Imperial 
Statistical  Office,  the  average  earnings  of  men  per  day  in  certain 
important  groups  of  industries  were,  in  March,  1914 : 

Metal  industry $1.32 

Engineering  industry 1.28 


Electrical  industry    $1.07 

Paper  industry  93 

Woodworking  industry 1.01 

Chemical  industry  1.24 

Stoneworking  and  pottery   1.07 

Food,  drink  and  tobacco 1.36 

Leather  and  rubber   1.20 

In  the  textile  industry  wages  were  considerably  lower  than 
the  low  wages  in  other  industries.  An  article  in  the  Soziale 
Praxis  of  Berlin,  Nov.  11,  1915,  stated  that  in  normal  times 
weekly  wages  of  from  7  to  10  marks  ($1.67  to  $2.38)  for  female 
workers  and  from  14  to  15  marks  ($3.33  to  $3.57)  for  male  work- 
ers represented  the  average  wages  paid  in  some  important  textile 
districts  in  Germany. 

How  do  these  wages  compare  with  the  cost  of  living?  The 
German  Imperial  Statistical  Office  in  1908  published  a  report  of 
an  investigation  of  the  annual  living  expenses  of  852  families, 
which  placed  the  average  annual  expenditure  per  family  at 
$531.70.  Compare  this  with  the  average  yearly  earnings  of  un- 
skilled workmen,  $310,  and  of  skilled  workmen,  $373. 

It  has  been  said  a  hungry  man  knows  no  conscience.  Before 
the  war,  while  the  land-owning  and  manufacturing  classes  waxed 
inordinately  rich,  the  masses  of  Germany  suffered  from  actual 
hunger.  While  Germany  was  increasing  her  navy  and  building 
her  costly  war  machine,  rents  and  the  costs  of  living  went  up 
year  by  year ;  the  barrack  tenements  became  more  and  more  over- 
crowded; foods  that  were  mere  necessaries  in  America  became 
luxuries  to  the  German  workers;  the  pinch  of  poverty  became 
more  acute.  The  German  government  realized  that  its  subjects 
were  approaching  uneasiness,  if  not  active  protest.  It  realized 
that  to  bring  this  hungry  and  at  the  same  time  docile  people  to 
the  savage  mood  for  war  all  that  was  needed  was  the  declaration 
that  Germany  was  attacked  and  that  England  wickedly  intended 
to  deprive  the  Germans  of  the  fruit  of  their  industry  and  thrift. 
It  likewise  held  out  the  promise  of  the  fat  lands  of  France,  the 
markets  of  Great  Britain,  of  colonies  beyond  the  seas.  Success 
in  war  meant  money  and  food. 

The  German  Imperial  Statistical  Office  affords  accurate  in- 
formation as  to  the  condition  of  the  German  workers'  stomach 
up  to  the  beginning  of  the  war. 

The  German  workers  for  many  years  have  used  horse  meat 
and  some  dog  meat.  In  Berlin  before  the  war  11,000  to  14,000 
horses  were  butchered  annually  for  the  markets.  Beefsteak,  veal 
and  chops  were  far  above  the  slender  means  of  many.  The  aver- 
age German  workingman,  according  to  official  German  statistics, 
was  able  to  buy  for  his  family  only  79  cents'  worth  of  meat  and 
26  cents'  worth  of  sausage  each  week.  The  average  family  ex- 
penditure for  fish  was  7  cents  a  week,  for  butter  or  its  substi- 
tutes— suet,  oleomargarine  and  lard — 36  cents  a  week,  and  for 
eggs  12  cents  a  week.    Of  cheese,  a  staple  German  food,  a  family 

8 


was  able  to  buy  only  7  to  8  cents'  worth.  For  other  necessaries 
the  average  family  expenditure  each  week  was:  Potatoes,  15  to 
16  cents'  worth;  vegetables,  10  to  11  cents;  sugar,  syrup  and 
honey,  11  cents ;  fruit,  12  cents ;  flour,  rice  and  cereals,  13  cents ; 
coffee,  consisting  chiefly  of  coffee  substitutes,  12  cents ;  tea,  choco- 
late and  cocoa,  4  cents ;  milk,  45  cents,  and  bread  and  pastry,  75 
cents.  During  peace  times  the  principal  diet  of  the  German 
workers  consisted  of  hog  meat,  potatoes,  milk,  pastry  and 
bread.  With  an  average  additional  outlay  of  14  cents  a  week 
for  drinks  and  10  cents  for  tobacco,  the  average  annual  expendi- 
ture per  year  for  a  skilled  worker's  family  amounted  to  $230.65. 

Germany  the  Pioneer  in  Food  Adulteration. 

Of  course,  one  has  heard  a  great  deal  about  the  cheapness  of 
food  in  Germany;  that  for  a  little  money  one  can  get  a  great 
deal  more  than  in  the  United  States.  In  addition  to  the  cost  of 
food,  according  to  a  study  of  a  given  number  of  families  made 
by  the  German  Imperial  Statistical  Office  during  1907- '08,  the 
average  family  expenditure  each  year  for  clothing  was  $67.22; 
for  rent,  $95.50;  for  heating  and  lighting,  $21.62,  and  for  mis- 
cellaneous expenses,  $105.19.  Bearing  in  mind  that  the  average 
yearly  earning  of  unskilled  workmen  was  $310  and  of  skilled 
workmen  $373,  the  difference  in  cost  of  food  between  Germany 
and  the  United  States  was  not  relatively  so  great  as  it  was  repre- 
sented to  be.  An  idea  of  how  the  German  workers'  food  com- 
pared with  that  of  the  workers  in  the  United  States  may  be 
gleaned  by  a  comparison  of  the  food  consumption  of  the  average 
German  workman  in  1907,  as  reported  bj^  the  German  Imperial 
Statistical  Office,  with  what  the  average  adult  male,  according 
to  the  report  of  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Labor,  consumed 
in  1903  in  the  United  States : 


Meats pounds. 

Poultry do . . . 

Butter do . . . 

Other  fats    do. . . 

Fish do . . . 

Cheese do . . . 

Eggs dozen. 

Potatoes pounds . 

Coffee do. . . 

Milk quarts. 

Sugar pounds . 

Tea do... 

Molasses gallons. 

Flour  meal pounds. 

Rice do . . . 


German 

United  States 

workman, 

adult  male, 

1907. 

1903. 

60.63 

186.19 

19.44 

16.31 

30.13 

13.23 

22.50 

20.46 

8.38 

4.38 

23.48 

202.82 

240 

6.83 

13.37 

111.90 

103.71 

69.75 

3.13 

1.06 

166.25 

7.90 

Reduced  to  the  barest  necessities,  the  German  masses  even  at 
that  were  forced  to  use  substitutes  and  adulterated  articles  in- 
stead of  pure  food.  Taking  the  facts  embodied  in  reports  of 
Prussian  state  officials,  the  ' '  Zeitschrif t  fiir  Oeifentliche  Chemie" 
published  in  1914  an  amazing  account  of  the  methods  of  food 
adulteration  which  prevailed  in  Germany.  According  to  this 
report,  artificial  butter  was  increasingly  being  used  instead  of 
real  butter,  even  in  the  country;  benzoic  and  sulphuric  acids 
were  used  as  preservatives  in  margarine ;  flour  and  bakery  prod- 
ucts were  adulterated  with  sand,  talcum  and  weed  seeds ;  imita- 
tion egg  mixtures  were  colored  with  coal  tar  products;  canned 
vegetables  were  colored  with  salts  of  copper ;  coffee  was  adulter- 
ated with  pulse  or  lupine  seeds;  fruit  jellies  were  found  to  be 
entirely  artificial;  without  regard  for  human  health,  the  most 
flagrant  adulteration  of  candy  was  carried  on.  The  penalty  for 
such  adulteration,  so  the  report  declared,  *'has  not  been  clearly 
defined  because  the  law  has  not  been  properly  explained."  In 
fact,  Germany  never  had  any  effective  food  investigations  or 
scandals. 

It  is  true  that  wages  rose  in  Germany  after  the  outbreak  of 
the  war.  But  how  did  they  rise?  xiccording  to  the  Bremer 
Burger-Zeitung,  by  September,  1916,  the  prices  of  foodstuffs  had 
increased  100  per  cent.  Against  this  the  increase  of  wages  was 
46  per  cent,  for  men  and  54  per  cent,  for  women. 

Intolerable  Conditions  in  Wretched  Tenements. 

But  don't  model  homes  for  workingmen,  quaint  cottages  and 
miniature  villas  embowered  with  flowers,  compensate  the  workers 
for  hardships?  In  January,  1913,  an  old  bill  demanding  hous- 
ing reform  was  again  introduced  in  the  Prussian  Legislature. 
This  bill  set  forth  the  deplorable  conditions  existing.  Needless 
to  say,  the  bill  did  not  pass.  The  general  mass  of  workers  in 
Germany,  skilled  and  unskilled,  live  in  what  are  known  as  '*  bar- 
rack tenements. ' '  These  tenements  are  built  in  a  series  of  blocks, 
one  row  behind  the  other,  the  grim  rows  situated  thirty  to  forty 
feet  apart,  and  usually  three  to  six  stories  in  height.  The  gloom, 
the  foulness,  the  lack  of  light  and  air,  the  sordid  barrenness  of 
the  dark  rooms,  the  lack  of  baths  and  heat  were  hidden  by  the 
meretricious  overdecoration  of  the  street  exterior.  American 
visitors,  seeking  proof  of  German  superiority  over  the  rest  of  the 
world,  described  only  these  gaudy  exteriors.  They  did  not  tell 
that  the  hall  baths  in  the  rear  were  used  by  from  eight  to  ten 
families,  or  that  one-fourth  of  the  families  living  in  these  small 
two  and  three-room  flats  had  to  take  in  lodgers  in  order  to  pay 
their  rent. 

The  Berlin  census  of  1900  showed  that  96.7  per  cent  of  the 
city's  population  lived  in  rented  dwellings,  mostly  in  these  sordid 
barrack  flats.  Of  412,713  tenements  in  Berlin,  37,369  were  of 
one  room,  175,163  of  two  rooms,  143,744  of  three  rooms,  and 

10 


56,197  of  four  rooms.  Of  555,416  dwellings,  housing  a  popula- 
tion of  1,906,994  persons  in  1913,  40,690  consisted  of  one  room, 
186,756  of  two  rooms,  180,850  of  three  rooms,  and  62,676  of  four 
rooms.  Of  this  number  34,508  had  no  kitchens.  In  41,115  room- 
ers were  kept,  and  in  58,400  households  transient  night  lodgers 
were  taken  in.  Such  are  the  happy  homes  of  German  workers ! 
Mr.  Gerard  has  stated  that  55  per  cent,  of  the  families  in  Berlin 
live  in  one  room.  The  prevailing  ''dwelling"  for  workers  is  a 
two-room  flat,  accommodating  a  family  of  four  to  six  persons, 
and  lodgers  besides.  For  these  "luxurious"  quarters  the  Ger- 
man workingman,  earning  on  an  average  $225  a  year,  has  had 
to  give  up  the  equivalent  of  about  fifty-six  days'  work  a  year  for 
rent.    Local  taxes  and  State  income  taxes  are  not  included. 

Conditions  similar  to  those  in  Berlin  exist  in  all  the  great 
German  cities.  In  Diisseldorf ,  much  praised  for  its  picturesque 
workingmen's  homes,  one-fourth  of  the  workers  in  1910  lived  in 
one  and  two-room  flats.  It  has  been  said  that  Germany  is  with- 
out slums.  What  are  perhaps  the  foulest  slums  in  the  world  are 
found  in  Magdeburg  and  Dantzig. 

Against  the  intolerable  housing  conditions  existing  in  Ger- 
many one  might  present  the  reforms  in  housing  introduced  in 
England,  France,  Belgium,  and  the  United  States.  While  much 
remains  to  be  done  in  improvements  in  this  country,  the  masses 
of  American  workers  enjoy  both  working  and  living  conditions 
infinitely  superior  to  those  of  Germany. 

Labor  Organizations  Repressed. 

The  German  propaganda  has  aimed  particularly  at  impress- 
ing the  working  classes  of  other  lands  with  the  purpose,  as  before 
pointed  out,  of  weakening  the  allegiance  of  labor  to  their  own 
Governments  by  making  them  believe  workers  were  better  off  in 
Germany.  Yet,  in  Germany,  workers  were  not  allowed  to  organ- 
ize until  long  after  unions  were  regarded  as  a  fundamental  right 
in  other  nations,  and  even  today  labor  meetings  are  under  direct 
bureaucratic  surveillance.  Few  strikes  have  been  successful  in 
Germany. 

In  1912,  according  to  the  German  Statistical  Year  Book,  68.3 
per  cent.,  or  more  than  two- thirds  of  the  strikers,  were  compelled 
to  return  to  work  without  meeting  any  success  for  their  demands. 
In  Saxony,  where  the  general  weekly  wages  of  textile  workers 
were  from  $1.30  to  $2.12  a  week,  the  workers  in  1917  petitioned 
for  the  granting  of  a  minimum  wage  scale.  According  to  the 
Berlin  Vorwdrts  of  Aug.  21,  1917,  General  Groner,  who  was 
charged  with  the  enforcement  of  the  auxiliary  service  law,  de- 
clared himself  against  the  minimum  wage — and  that  ended  it. 
When  the  textile  workers  in  Landeshut,  Silesia,  appealed  to  the 
War  Arbitration  Office  at  Posen,  the  presiding  officer  brusquely 
declared  their  wages  were  sufficiently  high  and  threatened,  if 

11 


the  mills  closed,  to  send  all  males  into  the  army  or  war  material 
establishments  and  the  females  to  farms  in  West  Prussia.  Such 
is  ''the  industrial  and  social  equality''  exploited  by  the  fatuous 
American  propagandists  of  ' '  superior  German  kultur. ' ' 

How  has  the  German  worker,  earning  less  than  it  costs  to 
keep  a  family,  managed  to  get  along  ?  An  investigation  made  by 
the  Imperial  Statistical  Office  showed  that,  out  of  852  families, 
in  278  the  wife  had  to  work  out.  In  1913  T.  St.  John  Gaffney, 
United  States  Consul  General  at  Dresden,  reported  to  the  United 
States  Department  of  State  that  a  full  third  of  the  economic 
labor  of  the  German  Empire  was  performed  by  women;  that 
German  statistics  showed  there  were  9,500,000  wage-earning 
women  in  Germany,  which  meant  that  every  second  woman 
earned  her  own  living.  In  1910  Mr.  Gaffney  reported  that  the 
work  day  for  women  had  been  reduced  from  eleven  hours  to  ten 
hours  daily,  and  eight  hours  on  Saturday.  As  Mr.  Gaffney  was 
such  a  pro-German  that  he  had  to  be  removed  from  office  by  our 
Government,  it  can  be  assumed  that  he  did  not  exaggerate  the 
bad  conditions. 

Women  in  Strenuous  Trades. 

In  1905,  according  to  an  investigation  made  by  the  Berlin 
Chamber  of  Commerce,  there  were  more  than  100,000  sweatshops 
in  Berlin  alone,  and  80  per  cent,  of  the  home  workers  were  women. 
The  Berlin  Chamber  of  Commerce,  investigating  2,051  municipal 
employes,  found  that  the  wives  of  20.2  per  cent,  worked  for 
money.  The  majority  earned  from  75  cents  to  $1.50  a  week ;  only 
25  received  more  than  $2.50  a  week. 

That  young  girls  worked  in  canning  factories  from  thirteen 
to  eighteen  hours  a  day,  and  on  Sundays  for  ten  to  more  hours, 
was  brought  out  by  an  investigation  made  by  the  German  Fac- 
tory Workers'  Union  in  1905.  Their  wages  were  3  to  4i/^  cents 
an  hour. 

Women  have  been  enlisted  in  the  most  strenuous  trades. 
Their  average  daily  earnings  in  March,  1914,  according  to  a 
report  of  the  German  Statistical  Office,  were : 

Cents. 

Metal  industry   49 

Engineering  industry  55 

Electrical  industry   65 

Paper  industry  55 

Woodworking  industry    47 

Chemical  industry 57 

Stoneworking  and  pottery  industry 41 

Food,  drink  and  tobacco  industry 51 

Leather  and  rubber  industry 67 

Before  the  war  about  64,000  women  and  girls  were  employed 
in  the  metal  trades,  working  from  nine  to  ten  hours  a  day.  In 
the  Soziale  Praxis,  Berlin,  April  19,  1916,  the  Federation  of 

12 


German  Metal  Workers  reported  thus  on  the  slavery  of  women 
in  the  metal  trade : 

''Even  for  men,  and  still  more  for  women,  work  at  flanging 
machines  is  too  hard.  *  *  *  At  these  machines  projectiles 
weighing  from  22  to  82  pounds  have  to  be  lifted  breast  high  and 
clamped  to  the  bed;  then  undamped  and  placed  again  on  the 
floor.  This  entails  a  great  physical  strain.  In  order  to  earn  a 
wage  of  3  marks  (71  cents)  a  day,  a  woman  must  perform  this 
operation  75  or  even  100  times." 

In  1914,  before  the  war,  7,265  women  and  31,290  children 
were  employed  in  coal  and  salt  mines.  According  to  a  report 
made  in  1914  by  United  States  Consul  General  Henry  H.  Morgan 
at  Hamburg,  the  number  of  children  employed  in  German  mines, 
mills,  and  factories  in  1911  was:  finder  14  years,  7,434 
boys  and  5,970  girls ;  14  to  16  years,  332,882  boys  and  172,535 
girls.  Of  518,821  children  employed,  40,799  boys  and  1,063  girls 
worked  in  mines;  29,164  boys  and  8,398  girls  worked  in  stone 
and  earth  trades;  55,821  boj^s  and  12,027  girls  worked  in  metal 
trades,  and  67,258  boys  and  4,917  girls  worked  on  machinery. 
Since  the  war  women  and  children  have  been  recruited  by 
countless  thousands  to  fill  the  places  of  men  taken  away  as  can- 
non fodder  for  the  Kaiser's  armies. 

Employment  in  trades  for  which  only  men  were  normally 
capable,  combined  with  underfeeding,  made  many  of  these 
women  unfit  for  motherhood.  Infant  mortality  up  to  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war  was  higher  in  Germany  than  in  any  country 
excepting  Russia  and  Austria, 

Infant  Mortality  Alarmingly  Great. 

Germany  has  claimed  to  be  the  innovator  of  the  movement 
to  reduce  infant  mortality,  to  take  care  of  poor  mothers,  to  give 
babies  and  children  proper  food  and  medical  attention — in  fact, 
the  whole  ''child  saving"  sj^stem  was  claimed  by  the  exponents 
of  Teuton  Kultur.  As  a  matter  of  historical  fact,  this  movement 
originated  in  France,  before  the  Revolution,  in  1786,  when  the 
Societe  de  Charite  was  founded.  Milk  stations  for  babies  were 
established  in  France  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  Yet  Germany 
has  advertised  her  krippen,  milk  stations,  clinics,  maternity  hos- 
pitals and  other  alleged  social  reforms  to  the  degree  that  Socialist 
Bentall  and  perhaps  many  others  were  inclined  to  regard  the 
possible  imposition  of  such  a  wonderful  government  upon  our- 
selves with  acquiescence.  Germany  has  never  advertised  the 
facts  regarding  infant  mortality  or  child  suicides.  In  this  alone 
is  a  damning  indictment  of  the  Prussian  system. 

According  to  official  figures  the  number  of  deaths  per  hun- 
dred of  children  under  one  year  of  age  in  the  German  Empire 
from  1910  to  1914  averaged  17,  against  11  in  France  and  10.9 
in  England  and  Wales.    The  infant  death  rate  per  thousand  in 

13 


1912,  according  to  the  report  of  the  Prussian  Medical  Depart- 
ment, Ministry  of  the  Interior,  was :  Berlin,  178 ;  Dantzig,  203 ; 
Breslau,  203 ;  Magdeburg,  202 ;  Posen,  212 ;  Diisseldorf ,  146,  and 
Hanover,  132.  The  death  rate  of  children  in  the  East  Side  of 
New  York  and  the  slums  of  other  American  cities  has  been  ex- 
ploited for  their  own  purposes  by  various  American  radicals  and 
Socialist  reformers,  who  at  the  same  time  praised  everything  that 
was  German.  A  death  rate  of  125  or  130  per  thousand  births  in 
any  American  city  would  be  regarded  with  great  alarm.  In 
1912  the  infant  death  rate  per  thousand  in  New  York  was  only 
105,  and  in  New  York  there  is  a  mixed  population,  including 
immigrants  and  uneducated  foreigners.  But  in  Germany,  where 
the  infant  death  rate  in  cities  averaged  130  to  258  per  thousand, 
there  was  no  such  problem.  Why  was  there  such  a  high  rate  of 
infant  mortality  in  the  German  Empire? 

Military  Juggernaut  Reaps  Infant  Victims. 

The  British  Labor  Party  and  Trade  Union  Commission  inves- 
tigating conditions  of  life  and  labor  in  Germany  in  1910,  in- 
quired into  the  infant  mortality  rate.  The  investigators  found 
that  in  the  town  of  Gera,  from  1898  to  1907,  more  than  30  per 
cent,  of  the  children  died  before  they  were  one  year  of  age.  Re- 
viewing the  infant  death  rate  in  the  German  textile  industrial 
districts,  the  reasons  given  for  the  astounding  conditions  were: 

''First — The  fact  that  wages  are  so  low  that  the  wife  is 
obliged  to  go  to  the  mill  to  help  keep  the  house  going. 

''Second — That  prices  of  necessities  are  so  high  that  a  suffi- 
cient amount  cannot  be  purchased,  especially  of  meat,  to  keep 
the  mother  in  a  state  of  physical  efficiency. 

"Third — That  a  considerable  number  of  the  children  are 
handed  over  to  the  care  of  neighbors  or  older  children,  and  lose 
the  close  attention  of  the  mother,  who  returns  to  the  factory  as 
soon  after  confinement  as  possible. 

"Perhaps  the  principal  reason  has  been  overlooked  by  the 
Germans  themselves.  From  the  number  of  workmen 's  homes  we 
visited  and  the  inquiries  we  made,  it  is  safe  to  assume  that  the 
average  textile  worker's  family  is  housed  in  two  small  rooms, 
measuring  twelve  feet  by  nine  feet,  in  a  high  building  of  five 
or  six  stories.  It  is  the  exception  rather  than  the  rule  for  a 
worker  to  have  three  of  these  rooms,  unless  he  has  other  members 
of  the  family  working;  and  the  stuffiness  of  these  rooms  can  be 
better  imagined  than  described,  when  the  family  is  all  present. ' ' 

According  to  statistics  prepared  by  Breckh's,  six-sevenths  of 
the  infants'  deaths  in  Berlin  were  of  bottle-fed  babies — this 
despite  the  vaunted  use  of  pasteurized  milk.  The  death  of  a 
majority  of  these  infants,  therefore,  must  be  ascribed  to  the 
physical  condition  of  mothers  who,  to  earn  a  meagre  living,  were 
driven  to  drudgery,  to  hard  labor  in  fields,  mines,  factories  and 

14 


shops.  Overstrained,  underfed,  their  health  destroyed,  unable 
to  nourish  infants,  they  brought  into  the  world  weaklings  too 
physically  unfit  to  survive. 

Appalling  Rate  of  Child  Suicide. 

And  of  those  who  did  survive,  an  appalling  percentage  was 
driven  to  death  hy  suicide.  Perhaps  there  is  nothing  so  reveal- 
ing of  the  actual  conditions  in  Germany,  no  such  commentary 
on  the  government  which  seeks  to  impose  its  will  on  the  world, 
as  the  death  by  their  own  hand  of  the  little  children  of  Germany. 
Why  did  these  children  seek  escape  by  death  from  a  life  of  hap- 
piness and  folksong?  Germany  was  pictured  to  American  chil- 
dren as  the  home  of  Santa  Glaus,  of  the  Christmas  tree,  of 
marvellous  mechanical  toys. 

Yet  in  this  Germany  of  alleged  happy  homes  many  children 
found  death  more  alluring  than  life.  In  Saxony  there  were  eight 
child  suicides  to  every  one  in  the  United  States,  and  in  Berlin 
fifteen  to  every  one  in  New  York  City.  In  the  United  States 
registration  area  the  suicide  rate  for  children  from  ten  to  four- 
teen years  of  age  has  been  0.55  per  100,000  population;  in 
Bavaria  it  has  been  1.55,  and  in  Saxony  4.39.  Bavaria  has  been 
less  under  the  influence  of  Prussia  than  Saxony,  where  the  work- 
ing classes  are  hard-worked  and  underfed.  In  Alsace-Lorraine, 
where  the  Prussian  influence  has  made  the  least  impress,  the 
suicide  rate  was  only  0.85  per  100,000  population,  or  0.30  more 
than  that  of  the  United  States. 

The  suicide  rate  of  adults  in  many  parts  of  Germany  was 
unparalleled  in  other  parts  of  the  world.  It  may  be  remarked 
that  a  low  general  rate  of  suicides  prevailed  in  the  Roman  Cath- 
olic sections  of  Westphalia,  the  Rhine  provinces  and  the  Polish 
provinces  of  Prussia,  while  in  the  stretches  from  the  North  Sea 
along  the  Elbe  to  Bohemia,  which  were  most  affected  by  the 
Prussian  system,  a  high  rate  of  30  to  35  per  100,000  prevailed. 
During  the  five  years  ending  wdth  1913  the  suicide  rate  per  100,- 
000  in  Berlin  was  35.8.  In  New  York  City,  where  suicides  are 
more  especially  marked  among  the  foreign  population,  the  rate 
was  17.2,  and  in  London  11.  During  the  same  period  the  suicide 
rate  per  100,000  population  in  the  Kingdom  of  Saxony  was  32.6, 
in  the  province  of  Brandenburg,  exclusive  of  Berlin,  33.1.  In 
the  Kingdom  of  Bavaria,  which  is  largely  Roman  Catholic,  the 
rate  was  16.2,  and  in  Alsace-Lorraine,  which  has  resisted  Prus- 
sianization,  only  15.5. 

The  great  increase  in  longevity  in  Germany  has  long  been 
one  of  the  chief  arguments  of  propagandists  for  German  effi- 
ciency. But  figures  show  that  the  death  rate  in  New  York  City 
has  decreased  much  more  rapidly  than  in  Berlin.  According 
to  the  figures  of  Gustavus  Myers,  the  actual  gain  in  longevity 
in  Germany  for  a  period  of  thirty  years  was  only  1.6  years. 

15  ' 


Comparing  the  period  from  1881- '92  with  the  four  years  from 
1908- '12  the  decrease  in  the  death  rate  in  New  York  was  39.9 
while  the  decrease  in  Berlin  was  only  27.8  per  cent.  In  short, 
health  is  not  so  well  safeguarded  in  Germany  as  in  America. 

One  of  the  other  chief  arguments  for  German  efficiency  has 
been  the  abolishment  of  the  unemployed  class.  Figures  show 
that  the  number  of  men  out  of  work  far  exceeded  the  available 
positions.  Just  before  the  war  there  were  171  applicants  for 
every  100  jobs,  according  to  the  figures  of  the  employment 
bureaus  in  one  German  state.  Clearly  this  understates  the  real 
situation  since  many  men  undoubtedly  sought  in  vain  for  work 
without  applying  to  an  agency. 

Pauperism  Doubled  in  Ten  Years. 

Pauperism  in  any  country  is  an  unfailing  index  to  ''the  just 
distribution  of  wealth"  in  that  country.  While  Germany  spent 
untold  sums  in  advertising  her  model  homes  for  workingmen, 
her  insurance  schemes  and  other  alleged  social  reforms,  she  was 
significantly  reticent  regarding  pauperism.  Of  course,  if  the 
pension  system  of  Germany  was  what  it  was  said  to  be  there 
should  have  been  no  such  thing  as  pauperism.  In  fact,  it  was 
claimed  there  were  no  paupers  in  Germany. 

Dr.  Friedrich  Zahn,  director  of  the  Bavarian  Royal  Statis- 
tical Office  at  Munich,  and  the  greatest  authority  on  poor  relief 
in  Germany,  read  a  paper  at  an  international  convention,  held 
in  1912,  impressively  called  ''The  Fifteenth  International  Con- 
gress on  Hygiene  and  Demography. ' '  Dr.  Zahn  presented  facts 
and  figures  which  proved  that  pauperism,  increasing  year  by 
year,  was  a  general  condition  throughout  the  German  Empire. 
In  Berlin,  for  instance,  the  number  of  persons  receiving  poor 
relief  had  increased  from.  31,358  in  1891  to  55,601  in  1909. 
From  1895  to  1909  between  9,000  and  10,000  persons  were  given 
poor  relief  in  Hamburg,  In  Munich  the  number  of  paupers 
getting  relief  had  more  than  doubled  in  five  years;  the  number 
who  received  alms  had  increased  from  11,133  in  1895  to  25,187 
in  1900  although  the  city's  population  had  decreased  less  than 
two-thirds.  From  1905  to  1909  the  poor  relief  expenses  in- 
creased almost  one-third  in  Frankfort-on-the-Main.  In  Nurem- 
burg  the  number  receiving  alms  increased  from  9,030  in  1900 
to  14,496  in  1908.  In  Diisseldorf  the  number  of  paupers  re- 
lieved almost  doubled  in  ten  years.  In  all  of  the  large  German 
cities  pauper  burials  were  frequent.  While  the  German  military 
machine  was  in  the  making,  while  German  manufacture  and 
commerce  expanded,  while  the  world  was  thrilled  with  bluster- 
ing boasts  of  German  achievements,  stark  destitution  increased 
among  the  masses  throughout  Germany. 

Destitution  Rampant  in  Richest  Agricultural  States. 

Public  expenditures  for  paupers  and  orphans  in  twenty-six 
German  cities  in  1910,  according  to  Dr.  Zahn,  were : 

16 


Expendi- 
ture, 1910 
Marks 
City 

Berlin 15,651,325 

Hamburg 7,709,240 

Munich   3,178,798 

Leipsic 3,868,567 

Dresden 3,305,722 

Cologne 3,321,212 

Breslau 2,107,812 

Frankfort-on-Maine 3,085,527 

Duesseldorf 1,811,947 

Nuremberg 1,340,687 

Hanover 1,408,183 

Essen 1,228,104 

Stuttgart 1,191,062 

Magdeburg 1,114,466 

Koeningsberg 1,041,324 

Bremen 1,683,007 

Dortmund 1,032,903 

Kiel 1,079,219 

Halle 842,104 

Strassburg 886,753 

Danzic 891,740 

Aachen 1,090,036 

Karlsruhe 580,902 

Mayence 503,819 

Wiesbaden 496,953 

Augsburg 430,927 


Per  capita 

expenditure 

Marks 

Marks 

1907 

1910 

6.44 

7.56 

7.53 

8.28 

4.67 

5.33 

7.22 

6.56 

5.07 

6.03 

.... 

6.43 

3.49 

4.12 

6.62 

7.45 

5.71 

5.05 

3.46 

4.02 

4.32 

4.74 

3.67 

4.17 

5.68 

4.16 

4.56 

3.99 

4.61 

4.23 

5.58 

6.87 

3.40 

4.86 

6.23 

5.10 

4.14 

4.66 

3.12 

4.96 

4.60 

5.23 

5.93 

6.98 

2.55 

4.33 

.... 

4.55 

3.66 

4.55 

.... 

4.21 

In  some  of  these  cities  the  cost  of  earing  for  sick  paupers  in 
hospitals  was  not  included.  In  Bavaria,  the  richest  agricultural 
state  in  the  German  Empire,  the  number  of  paupers  relieved, 
according  to  Dr.  Zahn,  had  increased  from  189,484,  in  1900,  to 
230,218,  in  1911.  Even  at  that  the  Bavarian  statistical  record 
was  incomplete.  Expenditures  for  poor  relief  in  Bavaria  in- 
creased from  9,442,955  marks,  in  1897,  to  17,460,000  marks,  in 
1911.  In  ten  years  from  1897  to  1906  about  $26,000,000  was 
spent  for  poor  relief.  That  destitution  was  not  confined  to  the 
great  cities  was  shown  in  the  annually  increasing  expenditures 
for  poor  relief  in  two  rural  districts  alone : 

Rhenish 

Westphalia  Prussia  . 

Year  Marks  Marks 

1886   300,000  611,000 

1890    330,400  700,000 

1895   491,600  1,006,000 

1900   615,700  1,349,000 

1905    835,800  1,510,000 

1906   817,300  1,504,000 

1907   895,100  1,533,000 

1908   984,000  1,715,000 

1909   1,034,650  1,697,000 

This  increase  in  poor  rural  relief  in  the  rural  districts  has 
been  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  population.    Yet  the  multipli- 


17 


cation  of  paupers  went  on  with  the  development  of  the  German 
state,  the  increase  of  German  wealth,  the  develoment  of  German 
industry,  and  after  the  enactment  and  application  of  the  so- 
called  social  reform  laws.  Does  this  indicate,  as  has  been  asserted, 
that  there  was  a  fairer  distribution  of  wealth  in  Germany  than 
elsewhere  in  the  world? 

Deprived  of  self-respect,  branded  as  an  outcast,  the  German 
pauper  was  doomed  to  end  his  days  in  the  foul  obscurity  of  hid- 
den byways  and  the  abominable  barrack  tenements.  And  what 
did  he  generally  get  ?  An  average  of  $1.50  a  month.  An  allow- 
ance of  $3  to  $4  was  considered  magnanimous  and  was  most  un- 
usual. Because  of  these  individual ' '  benefits, ' '  as  they  are  euphe- 
mistically called,  the  majority  of  paupers  have  been  kept  out 
of  the  almshouses,  and  superficial  investigators  swallowed  the 
declaration  of  German  officials  that  their  almshouses  were  almost 
empty. 

In  the  United  States  paupers  are  generally  sent  to  alms- 
houses. In  this  country  the  proportion  of  almshouse  paupers 
per  100,000  of  population  had  decreased  from  116.6  in  1900,  to 
91.5,  in  1910.  And  here  is  a  significant  fact :  Of  84,190  paupers 
admitted  to  almshouses  in  1910,  6,281  were  negroes  and  33,353 
foreign-born  whites,  of  which  5,531  were  German  born. 

Crime  Steadily  on  the  Increase. 

Since  the  United  States  entered  the  war  the  German  press 
has  referred  with  bitter  cynicism  to  the  alleged  low  standard 
of  official  and  political  integrity,  as  well  as  individual  honesty, 
in  this  country.  It  may  be  assumed  that  the  efficiency  and  in- 
tegrity of  a  government  may  be  interpreted  by  the  absence  of 
crime  and  the  moral  standard  of  the  people.  Without  referring 
specifically  to  the  profiteering  scandals  in  Germany  of  the  past 
year  or  more,  or  to  the  crime  wave  which  has  swept  over  the 
nation  which  designated  treaties  as  mere  scraps  of  paper,  official 
statistics  show  that  the  extent  of  crime  in  the  German  Empire 
before  the  war  was  astounding.  Evidence  of  this  may  be  found 
in  the  "Imperial  Statistics  of  the  German  Empire,"  Volume 
228,  dealing  with  ''Criminal  Statistics."  Dr.  Thos.  A.  F.  Smith, 
author  of  "The  Soul  of  Germany,"  compiled  a  table  showing 
the  convictions  for  various  crimes  in  Germany  and  England. 
According  to  data  gathered  by  Dr.  Smith,  there  were  in  Ger- 
many in  a  period  of  ten  years  250  convictions  for  murder, 
against  97  in  England  and  Wales.  Pointing  out  that  the  popu- 
lation of  England  and  Wales  is  three-fifths  that  of  Germany, 
Dr.  Smith  gives  the  following  staggering  comparisons : 


18 


Germany  England 

,,  ,.  .       ,  1897-'07  1900-'10 

Maliciously  and  feloniously  wounding  .  172,153  1,262 

Murders    35O  97 

Rapes 9,3gi  216 

Incest    573  5g 

Unnatural  crimes   g41  290 

Illegitimate  children   178,115  37,041 

Divorce  petitions 20,340  '965 

Malicious  damage  to  property  25,759  358 

Arson    610  278 

Just  as  children  were  driven  to  suicide  in  Germany  because 
of  the  intolerable  conditions,  so  were  a  large  proportion  of  chil- 
dren driven  to  crime.  In  1908  1,957  persons  were  convicted  of 
crimes  causing  death — of  this  number  176  were  between  twelve 
and  eighteen.  In  the  same  year,  of  13,562  persons  convicted 
of  crimes  against  morality  1,319  were  between  the  ages  of  twelve 
and  eighteen.  From  1901  to  1910  about  178,000  illegitimate 
children  were  born  each  year,  and,  according  to  German  sta- 
tisticsj  25  per  cent  of  the  children  born  in  Berlin  are  illegitimate. 
Since  the  beginning  of  the  war  the  German  government — fol- 
lowing its  policy  of  fostering  the  production  of  ''fodder  for 
cannon" — has  encouraged  the  propagation  of  male  children  by 
establishing  a  pension  for  all  male  infants  born,  and  children 
born  out  of  wedlock  have  been  officially  legitimatized.  Writing 
on  ''Polygamy  and  the  Collapse  of  the  Family  in  Germany," 
Rev.  Dr.  Newell  Dwight  Hillis  quotes  the  Berlin  Lokalanzeiger, 
of  March  7,  1916,  as  urging  that  "every  girl  should  be  given 
the  right  on  reaching  25  years  to  have  one  child  born  out  of 
wedlock,  for  which  she  should  receive  from  the  State  an  annual 
allowance."  Documents  found  on  the  dead  bodies  of  German 
officers,  quoted  by  the  Brooklyn  clergyman,  officially  ordered  the 
seduction  of  women  by  stalwart  Hun  soldiers  for  the  callous  and 
monstrous  purpose  of  bringing  about  a  wholesale  propagation 
of  Hun  children.  The  German  government  in  its  warfare  has 
carried  out  a  policy  of  killing  off  Belgian  and  French  women 
and  children,  and  of  making  occupied  territory  uninhabitable, 
in  order  that  the  depleted  peoples  of  Europe  should  not  be 
able  in  the  future  to  withstand  the  swarming  Teuton  breed.  In 
the  scientific,  cold  blooded  purpose  of  increasing  the  Hun  race, 
womanhood  is  being  prostituted  to  the  designs  of  imperial  Ger- 
many in  a  manner  unsurpassed"  even  in  the  days  before  Chris- 
tianity dawned  upon  the  world. 

Germany's  Policy  the  Exploit  Sham. 

Well  paid  for  their  labor,  comfortably  housed,  provided  with 
beer  gardens  and  free  amusements,  cared  for  in  sickness  and  old 
age  by  the  German  system  of  pensions,  the  German  working 
class  from  birth  to  old  age  enjoyed  a  social  paradise  such  as 
existed  nowhere  else  on  the  globe — that  is  what  Americans  were 

19 


told.  That  is  what  caused  certain  Americans  to  hazard  the 
amazing  declaration  that  it  might  not  be  so  bad  after  all  if  the 
benevolent  Prussian  government  came  over  here  and  took  things 
in  hand.  Before  the  war,  among  all  nations,  Germany  was  the 
arch-hypocrite.  Since  the  war  she  has  established  herself  as  the 
arch-criminal. 

Ignoring  all  that  has  been  accomplished  in  bettered  working 
conditions,  in  wage  compensation,  in  the  relation  of  employers 
and  employes  by  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  and  the  Rail- 
way Brotherhoods,  a  host  of  malcontents.  Socialist  agitators,  pro- 
German  pacifists,  I.  W.  W.-ites  and  statistical  experts  for  years 
have  sought  to  create  discontent  and  dissatisfaction  and  to  ex- 
ploit their  isms  by  foisting  the  German  hoax  upon  the  people  of 
this  country.  And  it  is  this  very  breed  of  fake  uplifters,  of 
pseudo  millenarians  who  at  this  late  day  advocate  compromise,  a 
patched-up  peace  with  that  perfidious,  hypocritical  and  criminal 
power.  In  America,  it  is  true,  we  have  been  more  prone  to  seek 
out  and  exaggerate  defects  than  to  recognize  social  progress  and 
industrial  betterment.  But  in  Germany  it  has  been  the  policy 
to  gloss  over  actual  conditions  and  exploit  the  sham.  And  it  is 
all  that  is  ugly,  cruel  and  barbarous  which  the  actual  facts  reveal 
behind  this  sham  that  the  Prussian  autocracy,  for  its  own  benefit, 
would  inflict  upon  the  world  through  a  war  unparalleled  in  cal- 
lous crime  in  the  annals  of  mankind.  To  maintain  our  precious 
birthright  of  freedom,  all  that  civilization  has  gained  for  us,  we 
cannot  consider  peace  until  that  power  is  broken  and  that  savage 
system  of  human  enslavement  utterly  destroyed. 

German  ' '  Efficiency.  ' ' 

With  her  braggart  claims  to  social  progress — which,  as  shown, 
facts  totally  disprove — imperial  Germany  also  grandiosely  bla- 
zoned the  world  with  assertions  about  her  supremacy  in  the  arts 
and  sciences,  in  inventions,  medical  discovery,  and  industrial 
efficiency,  with  conservation  of  man  power  and  human  energy. 
And  the  amazing  thing  was  that,  carrying  out  a  gigantic  bluff 
for  fifteen  years,  she  got  away  with  it.  The  German  nation, 
swollen  with  self-conceit,  found  its  supreme  expression  in  its 
bumptious  Kaiser,  who  mouthed  about  his  partnership  with  God 
and  his  commission  from  heaven.  But  did  Germany's  claims 
to  supremacy  in  industry,  invention  and  the  arts  have  any  more 
basis  than  her  claims  to  superiority  in  social  progress? 

In  the  inventions  which  have  revolutionized  modern  industry 
America  has  been  the  leader.  So  far  as  industrial  efficiency  is 
concerned,  for  100  trained  men  in  a  certain  industrial  plant  in 
the  United  States  it  took  an  average  of  450  methodical,  stolid, 
slow-moving  Germans  to  do  the  same  job  in  their  own  land. 
In  medical  science — in  which  Germany  has  especially  claimed 
sovereign  leadership — the  most  beneficent  discoveries  were  by 
Englishmen,  Frenchmen,  Americans  and  a  Russian. 

20 


But  let  us  give  Germany  full  credit  for  the  efficiency  in  which 
she  has  become  most  expert — in  the  fiendish,  destructive  per- 
version of  science  and  invention.  Science  in  other  nations  has 
been  devoted  to  the  amelioration  of  mankind's  ills.  German 
science  with  plodding  patience  diligently  sought  the  most  effi- 
cient and  deadly  methods  of  destroying  human  life  and  inflict- 
ing human  suffering — in  poisoning  wells  and  streams,  in  innocu- 
lating  human  beings  and  animals  with  loathsome  diseases,  and  in 
the  invention  of  the  most  hideous  instruments  of  warfare.  Ger- 
man science  triumphed  in  the  invention  of  poison  gas  and  liquid 
fire.  German  efficiency,  as  a  means  of  terrorization,  was  demon- 
strated in  Belgium.  Germany  exhibited  her  savage  efficiency 
in  the  treacherous  killing  of  women  and  children  on  the  high 
seas,  in  the  bombing  from  the  air  of  undefended  towns  and  cities 
and  of  Red  Cross  hospitals. 

Before  the  war  Germany  imposed  the  myth  of  her  social  and 
industrial  greatness  upon  the  world  by  blatant  fabrication  and 
shameless  deception.  Her  successes  in  this  war,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  have  been  the  successes  only  of  deceit,  betrayal  and  treach- 
ery. Unable  to  defeat  Russia  and  eliminate  that  country  from 
the  war  by  military  action,  Germany  achieved  the  same  result 
by  the  corruption  of  leaders  whom  the  simple  Russian  people 
trusted.  Unable  to  worst  the  Italian  army  with  all  her  com- 
bined forces  on  the  Austrian  front,  Germany  brought  about  the 
Italian  defeat  by  demoralizing  the  army  through  deceitful  So- 
cialistic propaganda  from  within.  Frustrated  and  baffled  in 
her  desperate  onslaughts  against  brave  France,  Germany  sought 
to  undermine  that  nation  by  defeatist  propaganda  such  as  that 
conducted  by  the  anarchistic  Bonnet  Rouge  and  by  Bolo 
Pasha.  In  underhand  methods  of  deception  and  deceit  Germany 
has  uniquely,  proved  her  efficiency — ^but  it  is  hardly  a  creditable 
efficiency.  It  is  the  efficiency  of  the  coward  and  the  bully,  of 
the  highwayman  and  the  thug,  of  the  creature  who  strikes  in 
the  back.  It  is  the  efficiency  one  would  expect  of  the  nation 
which  declared  all  treaties  to  be  scraps  of  paper,  which  sank 
the  Lusitania,  and  shot  Edith  Cavell. 

Germany  regarded  with  frank  aplomb  and  self-gratification 
the  vast  spy  system  which  she  wove  in  peaceful  times  and  with 
which  she  enmeshed  the  unwary  nations  of  the  world.  In  some 
respects,  it  must  be  admitted,  that  spy  system  was  efficient. 
Besides  gathering  military  information,  her  spies  were  indus- 
triously engaged  in  pilfering  the  fruits  of  American  inventive 
genius,  and  of  the  genius  of  other  nations  whom  she  is  now 
fighting.  These  Germany  unscrupulously  appropriated  as  her 
own.  She  was  manifestly  efficient  in  theft.  When  it  came  to 
the  outright  robbery  of  inventions,  plans  and  documents,  Ger- 
many's professional  sneak  thieves  and  eavesdroppers  compe- 
tently carried  out  the  will  of  their  imperial  masters.  But  where 
it  came  to  gauging  the  temper  of  a  nation,  to  comprehending 
the  spiritual  ideals  and  moral  principles  of  peoples,  they  were 

21 


totally  abysmal  failures.  German  spies  in  England  reported 
that  that  effete  nation  would  not  go  to  war  if  Belgium  were 
attacked.  German  spies  in  France — whose  miserable  Hun  souls 
were  incapable  of  measuring  the  ideals  and  heroic  soul  of  France 
— reported  that  France,  morally  corrupt  and  unprepared,  could 
not  withstand  Germany.  German  spies  were  not  able  to  dis- 
cover that  Foch  could  come  back,  or  that  he  had  an  army  in 
reserve.  German  spies,  operating  in  the  United  States,  con- 
temptuously reported  that  America,  interested  only  in  dollars, 
would  never  go  to  war  over  the  U-boat  issue.  The  German 
propaganda — save  among  Socialists,  the  I.  W.  W.,  pacifists  and 
motley  radicals — could  not  be  called  successful.  Despite  the 
expenditure  of  untold  millions,  German  efficiency  failed  to  keep 
America  out  of  the  war.  With  all  her  underground  ramifica- 
tions of  spies,  Germany  has  not  been  able  to  interfere  with  the 
transportation  of  troops  nor  obstruct  the  nation  in  its  military 
program.  History  will  not  fail  to  give  Germany  the  place  she 
deserves,  and  to  give  her  full  credit  where  credit  is  due.  It  will 
not  be  credit  for  social  insurance  laws,  model  tenements,  for 
evolving  a  paradise  for  workers,  or  even  for  supreme  gifts  in 
beneficent  medicine.  History"  will  accord  to  German  efficiency 
and  inventive  skill  credit  for  what  it  has  done  in  the  slaughter 
of  humans,  in  efforts  to  debauch,  debase  and  betray  unsuspecting 
nations.  It  will  give  her  full  credit  for  all  that  is  represented 
in  the  Brest-Litovsk  treaty. 

Much  has  been  written,  and  by  the  very  fellows  who  have 
carried  on  the  social  progress  myth,  about  German  science  and 
invention.  As  no  other  nation  had  adopted  a  blow-hard  policy 
of  trumpeting  its  own  superior  greatness,  German  achievement 
was  practically  the  only  achievement  we  heard  about. 

What  Germany  Has  Not  Done  in  Scientific  Invention. 

In  an  article  in  The  National  Magazine,  of  September,  1917, 
Mr.  Bennett  Chappell  takes  up  Germany's  claim  to  leadership 
in  scientific  invention,  and  shows  exactly  what  Germany  has  not 
done,  and  what  other  nations,  especially  America,  have  accom- 
plished. Mr.  Chappell  cites  the  invention  of  the  steamboat,  by  an 
American,  as  an  event  which  opened  up  the  free  seas  of  the 
world  for  the  wider  use  of  mankind.  It  was  not  a  German,  but 
an  American,  Lieut.  Maury,  who,  before  the  Civil  War,  charted 
ocean  currents  and  established  steamship  lanes.  The  very  charts 
that  are  used  today  all  over  the  world  were  prepared  under  his 
direction. 

What  had  German  inventive  genius  to  do  with  electricity t 
From  Franklin  to  Edison,  America  has  been  the  home  of  elec- 
trical invention.  Where  was  the  cotton  gin,  which  has  afforded 
cotton  clothes  as  the  common  garb  of  the  world,  invented  ?  Who 
invented  the  telegraph  and  the  telephone?  The  submarine,  the 
torpedo,  the  aeroplane,  the  bicycle  and  pneumatic  tire?     Did 

22 


Germans  invent  harvesting  machinery,  binders,  disc-plows, 
threshers,  washing-machines,  and  sewing  machines?  Did  the 
moving  picture  machine,  modern  printing  presses,  the  linotype 
and  monotype,  and  piano  player  originate  in  the  Fatherland? 
To  America  the  credit  for  every  one  of  these  great  and  revolu- 
tionary inventions  belongs. 

The  business  life  of  the  world  has  been  advanced  by  the  con- 
structive genius  of  America.  America  is  the  home  of  the  type- 
writer, the  adding  machine,  the  phonograph,  the  dictaphone  and 
the  detectaphone.  Did  the  sky-scraper  originate  in  Germany? 
Did  Germans  first  use  structural  steel  and  brick  or  stone?  Did 
they  invent  elevators?  It  was  a  Yankee  who  invented  the  first 
shoe  machinery.  *' Drilling  machines,  glass  blowing  machinery, 
carpet  weaving  machinery,  automatic  machinery,  all  came  first 
from  America,"  writes  Mr.  Chappell.  "Look  over  the  records 
of  our  steel  companies  for  comparative  efficiency.  The  tin  can 
is  an  American  idea  of  efficiency,  food-box  making  machinery 
another.  What  have  we  overlooked?  Oh,  yes,  it  was  America 
who  taught  the  world  how  to  use  reinforced  concrete  and  build 
great  dams  and  bridges — how  to  tunnel  mountains  and  build 
great  suspension  and  cantilever  bridges."  Mr.  Chappell  points 
out  that  Americans  were  the  first  to  make  alloy  steel;  that 
Americans  invented  air-brakes,  car  couplings  and  other  life- 
saving  appliances;  that  America  inaugurated  and  still  leads  in 
the  '  *  Safety-first ' '  movement ;  that  automatic  signals,  pneumatic 
switches  and  sleeping  cars  were  invented  and  developed  in 
America.  "If  you  took  American  inventive  genius  away  from 
the  world  and  only  had  German  efficiency,  where  would  the 
world  get  off?"  asks  Mr.  Chappell.  Americans,  Mr.  Chappell 
points  out,  invented  the  following : 

Submarines  Telephone 

Airplanes  Harvesting  machinery 

Torpedoes  Gas  engines 

Automobiles  Railroads 

High  explosives  Typewriters 

Machine  guns  Electricity  in  all  its  forms 

Telegraph  Modem  printing  presses 

"In  manufacturing  circles  do  we  have  to  bend  the  knee  to 
German  efficiency  ?  Hardly ! ' '  continues  Mr.  Chappell.  "America 
practicalized  steam  railroads  for  long  distance  runs,  invented 
the  first  Corliss  engine  and  electric  storage  battery.  We  were 
the  first  to  make  gasoline  and  electric  boats.  The  art  of  vulcan- 
izing rubber  as  a  basis  for  thousands  of  useful  articles  in  every 
day  use  was  made  practical  by  the  American,  Goodyear,  and  our 
efficiency  here  has  led  the  world  since  the  beginning  of  the  in- 
dustry. We  were  the  first  to  use  alcohol  commercially  and  make 
alcohol  engines  and  boilers.  The  Germans,  along  with  the  rest 
of  the  world,  laughed  at  us  as  we  worked  over  rotten  cabbage 
and  garbage  waste  to  make  alcohol.     Yet  today  their  exploita- 

23 


tion  of  this  idea  is  regarded  as  the  great  sign  of  Germany's  much 
vaunted  efficiency/' 

It  was  the  Government  of  the  United  States  that  first  organ- 
ized in  1873  a  weather  bureau.  Germany  gained  from  us  the 
knowledge  of  weather  conditions  which  has  enabled  her  to  per- 
fect her  dream  of  the  Zeppelin.  Two  technical  scientific  inven- 
tions of  America  are  the  barograph  for  measuring  the  height 
at  which  an  aeroplane  flies,  and  the  spring  thermometer  for 
registering  degrees  of  cold  beyond  80,  wherein  mercury  freezes. 
The  microphone  which  is  used  today  to  warn  those  on  shore  of 
the  approach  of  ships  is  the  invention  of  an  America Ji. 

Mr.  Chappell  goes  on  to  say: 

''The  reason  why  the  United  States  has  led  the  world  in  ef- 
ficiency is  simple.  We  were  the  first  nation  to  grant  an  indi- 
vidual the  right  to  profit  hy  his  idea — hy  giving  a  patent.  The 
first  patent  in  America  was  issued  hy  our  first  President,  George 
Washington,  and  ran  for  a  period  of  seventeen  years.  American 
brains  have  been  *at  it'  ever  since.  The  American  patent  law 
is  the  father  of  all  patent  laws  in  the  world  today — in  recog- 
nition of  individual  rights.  The  inventive  genius  of  America 
has  been  given  full  swing,  the  individual  initiative  has  been 
encouraged.  Think  of  that,  you  who  have  been  forgetting  Amer- 
ican efficiency. 

''The  German  spy  system  began  long  before  the  war.  During 
the  last  fifty  years,  the  United  States  has  made  world-strides  in 
invention,  in  business  management  and  industrial  exportations, 
and  Germany  sent  her  lookouts — ostensibly  to  observe,  but  really 
to  appropriate.  There  have  been  many  instances  of  young  Ger- 
mans working  in  American  foundries,  burning  the  midnight  oil 
and  making  drawings  so  as  to  utilize  the  fruits  of  American 
inventive  genius  and  efficiency.  In  Germany  they  could  supply 
skilled  labor  at  half  the  cost,  and  successfully  compete  with 
America  in  her  own  market — even  in  the  face  of  a  high  tariff. 
To  secure  the  plans  and  ideas,  without  cost  or  loss  of  time,  was 
the  main  consideration.  Germany  did  not  balk  at  the  moral 
issue  involved  in  this  process  of  polite  larceny." 

What  has  Germany  done  for  the  health  of  the  world  ?  What 
has  she  originated  in  sanitation?  In  medicine?  Mr.  Chappell 
answers : 

* '  Every  step  in  the  direction  of  sanitation  as  expressed  in  the 
modern  bathroom  and  toilet  facilities  has  been  taken  in  America. 
What  has  this  meant  to  the  health  of  our  cities  ?  Look  into  the 
practice  of  medicine  and  find  who  discovered  and  used  the  first 
anesthetic,  which  has  been  the  basis  of  all  surgery  and  relief 
of  pain.  It  was  not  a  Germany  efficiency  expert — it  was  the 
American,  Dr.  Wells,  who  did  this  for  the  world,  and  first 
demonstrated  it  in  an  American  hospital. 


24 


TRroMPHS  m  Science  and  Medicine  That  Abe  Not  German. 

Another  American,  Dr.  Trudeau,  showed  that  pure  cold  air, 
proper  food  and  all  sane,  common-sense  ways  of  living  form  the 
most  efficacious  treatment  of  consumption.  Dr.  Murphy,  whose 
intestinal  button  has  saved  thousands  of  lives;  Dr.  Lazear,  who 
died  in  proving  that  mosquitoes  carry  yellow  fever  and  malaria ; 
Dr.  Carel  (with  the  French  Dr.  Dakin),  whose  wonderful  anti- 
septic treatment  of  wounds  has  shown  marvelous  results  in 
France,  and  Dr.  Abbott,  discoverer  of  the  hot  wax  treatment 
for  burns — all  these  men  are  Americans.  The  most  important 
discoveries  in  the  medical  realm  are  not  attributable  to  Ger- 
mans. Dr.  Jenner,  an  Englishman,  gave  vaccine  to  the  world; 
Dr.  Lister,  also  English,  was  the  father  of  antiseptics;  France 
has  given  the  Pasteur  serums,  the  Roux  antitoxin  for  diphtheria, 
the  Curie  radium  and  radio-activity  discoveries ;  and  the  bacterial 
action  of  white  corpuscles  of  the  blood  was  the  theory  advanced 
by  Dr.  Metchnikoff,  a  Russian. " 

What  about  Germany's  preeminence  in  chemistry?  Surely, 
even  if  she  has  bluffed  about  other  achievements,  at  least  we 
must  concede  that  in  chemical  discoveries,  especially  in  coal-tar 
products,  her  claims  have  been  legitimate.  Townes  R.  Leigh,  in 
an  article  published  in  the  Drug  and  Chemical  Markets,  points 
out  "that  of  the  thirty  chief  men  of  science  of  the  sev- 
enteenth century  only  three  were  of  German  blood;  and,  of 
twenty-seven  of  the  eighteenth  century,  again  only  three  were 
German. ' '  Although  Germany  exploited,  and  grew  rich  on,  coal 
tar  dyes,  the  production  of  coal  tar  dyes  was  the  work  of  an 
English  chemist,  W.  H.  Perkins.  An  Englishman,  Lightfoot, 
in  1863,  produced  aniline  black;  Verquin,  a  French  chemist, 
produced  the  dyes  known  as  magenta  and  rosaniline,  while  the 
important  discovery  of  the  sulphur  dye  was  also  the  work  of 
Frenchmen,  Croissant  and  Brittonpiere. 

''When  we  recall  that  Samson  slew  a  thousand  Philistines 
with  the  jawbone  of  an  ass,"  writes  Mr.  Leigh,  "we  intuitively 
wonder  how  many  he  would  have  slain  if  armed  with  the  jaw- 
bone of  a  German  propagandist,  according  to  whom  all  things 
were  made  by  Germans  and  without  them  was  not  anything 
made  that  was  made.  As  much  as  the  German  has  boasted,  he 
has  borrowed  more;  as  much  as  he  has  talked,  he  has  taken 
more." 

Mr.  Leigh  presents  facts  in  the  history  of  chemical  discoveries 
and  development,  and  these  facts  conclusively  prove  that  the 
Teutonic  claim  to  preeminence  in  this  science  is  just  as  hollow 
as  the  claim  to  superiority  in  social  progress  and  in  industrial 
and  inventive  achievements.  The  first  chemical  works  in  the 
world  were  established  by  Chaptal,  near  Montpelier,  France. 
Among  the  bright  names  of  those  who  gave  the  world  the  princi- 
ples and  fundamental  laws  by  which  the  science  of  chemistry 
is  governed — as  given  in  the  leading  text  book  used  in  the  f ore- 

25 


most  universities — the  name  of  no  German  is  to  be  found.  Ger- 
many, says  Mr.  Leigh,  did  not  discover  a  single  one  of  these 
secrets  of  general  chemistry.  Liebig  and  Wohler,  who  in  the 
nineteenth  century  made  important  contributions  to  the  branch 
of  synthetic  chemistry,  received  their  training  from  the  French. 
Mr.  Leigh  continues: 

"When  we  look  over  a  catalogue  of  the  chemical  elements 
we  are  at  once  impressed  with  the  very  small  number  of  useful 
ones  discovered  and  first  examined  by  Germans.  Not  a  com- 
ponent of  the  air  he  breathes  was  discovered  by  a  German. 
Oxygen  is  credited  to  Priestley,  an  Englishman;  nitrogen,  first 
recognized  by  Rutherford,  a  professor  in  Edinburgh  University ; 
carbon  dioxide,  isolated  by  Black,  a  Scottish  chemist  and  physi- 
cist; helium,  krypton,  xenon  and  neon,  discovered  and  first 
studied  by  British  subjects,  Lockyer,  Ramsay,  Crookes  and  Ray- 
leigh.  Not  an  element  in  water  was  discovered  by  any  German. 
Hydrogen  was  discovered  by  Cavendish,  the  noted  English 
chemist.  Not  an  element  in  the  salt  with  which  we  savor  our 
food  was  discovered  by  any  German.  Its  chlorine  is  a  gift  of 
that  productive  investigator,  Scheele,  a  Swede;  its  sodium  from 
the  versatile  Davy,  of  London.  The  indictment  which  has  been 
brought  against  German  chemists  concerning  the  elements  in  air, 
water  and  salt  may  be  extended  to  cover  the  elements  found  in 
seventy-five  thousand  other  substances,  including  nearly  all  of 
the  synthetic  compounds  used  in  the  world's  trade." 

Coal  was  first  distilled,  and  coke,  tar  and  gas  obtained,  in 
1739  by  Dr.  Clayton,  of  Kildare.  A  Scotch  nobleman,  the  Earl 
of  Dundonald,  less  than  fifty  years  later,  patented  a  process  of 
extracting  coal  tar  in  commercial  quantities.  Coal  gas  was 
first  used  as  an  illuminant  in  1792  by  William  Murdock,  an 
Englishman.  ''Naphthalene,  used  chiefly  in  the  manufacture  of 
indigo,"  continues  Mr.  Leigh,  ''was  discovered  in  1820  by  Gar- 
den; benzol,  the  parent  substance  of  the  most  important  dyes, 
was  discovered  in  illuminating  gas  in  1815  by  Faraday ;  anthra- 
cene, largely  used  in  the  synthesis  of  Turkey-red,  was  first  pro- 
duced by  Dumas,  of  France ;  toluene,  used  both  for  making  dyes 
and  the  powerful  explosive,  T.  N.  T.,  was  first  obtained  by 
Mansfield;  and  picric  acid,  also  employed  in  the  manufacture 
of  dyes  and  explosives,  was  first  prepared  by  Peter  Woulfe,  a 
London  chemist."  Mr.  Leigh  points  out  that  the  miner's  safety 
lamp,  by  which  the  hazards  of  coal  mining  were  largely  removed, 
is  the  invention  of  Sir  Humphrey  Davy.  W.  H.  Perkins,  the 
English  chemist,  not  only  produced  in  1856  the  first  coal  tar  dye, 
but  perfected  a  method  of  manufacturing  alizarin,  whereby  the 
use  of  madder  in  making  the  dye  was  rendered  unnecessary  and 
the  vast  acreage  formerly  devoted  to  the  cultivation  of  this  plant 
was  given  over  to  cereals  and  other  crops. 

It  is  true  that  Germany  forged  ahead  in  the  manufacturing 
of  dyes,  and  that  in  1913  she  exported  twelve  times  as  much 
synthetic  color  as  was  manufactured  in  the  United  States.    But 

26 


in  this,  as  in  other  industries,  she  simply  appropriated  and  bat- 
tened upon  the  genius  and  work  of  others,  and,  while  covering 
her  malfeasances  and  thefts  by  impressive  boasting,  continued 
her  outlaw  career  as  camouflaged  highwayman  among  the 
nations. 

German  Commercialization  of  Musical  Prestige. 

Blandly  ignoring  France,  England  and  Italy,  and  contemptu- 
ously dismissing  America  as  a  country  whose  highest  form  of 
literature  and  art  is  found  in  newspaper  advertisements  and 
magazine  covers,  and  whose  noblest  form  of  music  is  ' '  ragtime, ' ' 
Germany  lauded  her  own  supremacy  in  music,  painting,  sculp- 
ture and  literature. 

Consider  music.  Germany  has  asserted  with  fiinality  that 
she  has  been  supreme  in  this  art.  And  just  as  we  tacitly  ac- 
cepted her  other  braggings,  we  never  paused  to  question  the 
legend  of  her  musical  superiority.  Germany  has  produced  some 
great  musicians,  but  let  it  be  noted  they  were  not  Prussian,  but 
South  German.  How  did  she  encourage  music?  How  did  she 
foster  the  rare  genius  that  did  find  its  birth  in  the  Fatherland? 
Some  light  on  Germany's  place  in  music  is  given  in  an  article 
by  John  C.  Freund  in  the  October,  1918,  issue  of  Musical 
America,  which  answers  these  questions.    Mr.  Freund  says: 

''Through  the  excellent  German  musicians  and  music  teach- 
ers who  came  to  this  country  in  years  past,  through  the  musical 
conductors,  principally  Germans,  continuous  propaganda  was 
made  to  the  effect  that  a  musical  education  could  not  be  really 
secured  in  the  United  States,  so  one  had  to  go  to  Germany, 
especially  to  Berlin  or  Dresden,  for  it.  Writers  on  the  Ameri- 
can press  were  so  imbued  with  the  German  idea  that  they  turned 
the  cold  shoulder  to  French,  Italian,  and  particularly  English 
music.  Such  music,  indeed,  barely  existed  for  them.  In  fact, 
take  our  leading  critics  for  years.  They  were  so  saturated  with 
'the  German  myth'  that  they  went  so  far  as  to  declare  that  such 
an  idea  as  an  American  composer  was  preposterous.  He  did 
not  exist,  and  he  never  would.  As  for  'musical  atmosphere,'  so- 
called,  why  that  existed  only  in  Germany. 

"So  we  have  ample  evidence  that  the  German  virus  had  been 
so  injected  into  the  blood  of  the  American  people  that  if  a  con- 
ductor passed  away,  there  was  only  one  thing  to  do,  and  that 
was  to  cable  to  Berlin  to  find  out  who  was  out  of  a  job,  or 
who  would  accept  from  six  to  ten  times  as  much  money  as  he 
ever  saw  before,  to  come  over  here  and  help  us  musical  barbarians 
out  of  our  dilemma. 

"While  we  have  received  with  complacency,  and,  indeed, 
subserviency,  the  criticism  that  Germany  has  hurled  at  us  all 
the  time,  that  we  are  a  non-musical  people,  it  has  never  occurred 
to  anybody  to  throw  the  limelight  on  Germany. 

' '  The  finest  symphony  orchestra  among  the  German-speaking 
people  is  not  a  Berlin  orchestra,  but  the  Vienna  Philharmonic. 

27 


And  that  is  not  up  to  the  standard  of  the  New  York  Philhar- 
monic nor  of  the  Boston  Symphony.  The  greatest  opera  or- 
chestra is  not  at  the  Berlin  Opera  House  but  at  the  Royal  Opera 
House,  in  Dresden,  and  that  orchestra,  in  the  opinion  of  com- 
petent and  unbiased  experts,  is  not  up  to  the  standard,  by  any 
means,  of  the  present  orchestra  in  the  Metropolitan  in  New 
York. 

*'To  hear  people  talk,  one  would  suppose  that  all  the  great 
conductors  came  from  Germany.  They  didn't.  Hans  Richter 
was  born  in  Hungary,  educated  in  Vienna.  Nikisch  is  a  Hun- 
garian by  birth,  family  and  education.  Gustav  Mahler  was  a 
Bohemian.  Seidl,  the  great  Wagner  conductor,  for  years  with 
us  at  the  Metropolitan,  was  a  Hungarian.  Mottl,  a  Viennese, 
born  in  Vienna.  Weingartner,  a  Dalmatian.  Stransky  is  an 
Austrian.  So  is  Kunwald.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Germany,  in 
a  generation,  has  produced  only  one  great  conductor  outside 
of  the  late  Theodore  Thomas,  namely,  Hans  von  Biilow. 

*' Now  let  us  take  some  of  the  great  musicians,  often  classed 
as  Germans.  Kreisler  is  a  Viennese.  Kubelik  is  a  Bohemian. 
Auer,  the  renowned  violin  teacher,  is  a  Hungarian.  Among 
the  pianists,  Rosenthal  came  from  Austria.  Sauer  is  a  Viennese, 
though  born  in  Hamburg.  D 'Albert  was  born  in  Glasgow, 
Scotland,;  while  De  Pachman  is  a  Russian. 

'  \  Now  so  far  as  opera  is  concerned.  Italian  opera  in  Ger- 
many is  a  weird  thing.  Anybody  who  has  ever  heard  'Aida,' 
especially  in  a  minor  German  city,  will  agree. 

''Only  recently  Dr.  Richard  Strauss  suggested,  as  a  means 
of  doing  away  with  what  he  called  '  Germany 's  operatic  misery, ' 
that  three  or  four  of  the  cities  of  twenty-five  thousand  inhabi- 
tants, or  more,  should  get  together  and  combine  their  resources, 
so  as  to  get  something  like  a  decent  standard  of  operatic  per- 
formances. 

"If  you  want  to  hear  a  fine  Wagner  performance,  you  need 
not  go  to  Germany.  You  can  hear  it  right  here  in  New  York 
or  Chicago. 

"Prices  for  opera,  it  is  true,  are  cheap,  in  Germany,  one 
of  the  reasons  being  the  poor  salaries  paid  to  the  singers,  espe- 
cially to  the  chorus  and  musicians.  And  then  there  is  the  state 
and  municipal  support  given  to  opera. 

"Berlin  is  the  piano  center  of  the  world.  Admitted.  But 
few  of  the  concerts  are  of  high  rank.  One  of  the  reasons  is 
that  so  many  young  people,  especially  young  Americans,  are 
anxious  to  start  concert  careers  there.  They  spend  money  to 
get  criticisms  from  the  German  press,  which  are  worth  little  or 
nothing. 

"There  are  many  fine  military  bands  in  Germany,  but  not 
one  superior  to  our  Sousa's,  as  was  proved  when  Sousa  took  his 
band  through  Europe  not  so  long  ago. 

' '  There  are  some  fine  teachers  in  Germany,  but  by  no  means 
superior  to  the  German  teachers  and  others  in  this  country, 

28 


whether  for  instrumental  or  vocal  work.  In  the  case  of  leading 
teachers,  unless  a  student  is  well  advanced  and  has  considerable 
talent,  he  or  she  is  apt  to  be  handed  over  to  a  '  vorbereiter ' — or 
assistant — generally  a  pupil  who  is  paying  his  lessons  that  way. 

''To  hear  Germans  talk — that  is,  Germans  in  Germany — you 
would  think  that  as  soon  as  a  celebrated  composer  brings  out 
a  new  work,  it  will  be  produced  in  Berlin.  Before  six  months, 
New  York  will  have  it,  and  that  will  be  months  before  it  will 
be  heard  in  Berlin.  In  Berlin  the  people  are  so  over-sated  with 
music  that  they  have  become  blase.  They  are  musically  over- 
educated. 

"The  result  of  the  high  degree  of  musical  knowledge  and 
culture  in  Germany  is  that  it  has  been  used  as  a  cloak  for  an 
army  of  fakers,  who  pose  as  musical  experts  and  teachers,  whose 
special  prey  are  Americans. 

''Let  us  never  forget  that  all  the  great  composers  of  whom 
Germany  is  so  proud  today,  including  Liszt,  who  was,  by  the 
bye,  more  Italian  than  German,  never  received  any  recognition 
from  their  own  compatriots  until  it  was  too  late,  or  till  after 
they  were  dead,  like  Schubert.  Read  the  biography  of  Wagner 
and  realize  how  he  was  maligned  by  his  compatriots,  the  Ger- 
mans, till  the  crazy  King  Ludwig  of  Bavaria  took  compassion 
on  him. 

"In  all  this  madness  there  was  method!  Not  alone  because 
it  brought  money  to  the  grist  mills  in  Germany  that  were  grind- 
ing out  war  munitions,  preparing  food  supplies  for  the  great 
day  when  the  strike  would  be  made  for  world  dominion,  but 
because  the  German  High  Command  realized  long  ago  that 
through  the  German  music,  through  the  German  musicians, 
through  the  German  conductors,  they  had  access  to  the  inner- 
most circles  of  life,  not  only  all  over  Europe,  but  in  this  country, 
and  as  we  know  through  the  internment  of  Dr.  Muck  of  the 
Boston  Symphony,  of  Dr.  Kunwald,  of  the  Cincinnati  Symphony, 
they  used  this  power  not  only  for  propaganda,  but  for  the  most 
nefarious  assaults  upon  the  very  welfare  and  lives  of  our 
people." 

Teuton  Vandalism  Unparalleled  Since  Burjjing  of 
Alexandrian  Library. 

In  an  article  on  "Germany,  Patron  of  the  Gracious  Arts," 
T.  Everett  Harre,  the  novelist,  considers  Germany's  vainglorious 
claims  to  eminence  in  literature,  painting  and  sculpture.  Mr. 
Harre  says : 

"In  the  early  days  of  the  great  war,  when  the  world  stood 
aghast  at  the  spectacle  of  f rightfulness  wrought  in  Belgium, 
many  people  asked  how  it  was  possible  for  the  quiet,  simple,  home 
loving  Germans  suddenly  to  change  into  demoniac  murdering 
and  burning  hordes.     The  stunned  world  saw  cathedrals  and 

29 


edifices  of  incomparable  beauty  given  wantonly  to  the  flames. 
Since  the  burning  in  the  fourth  century  of  the  famed  library  of 
Alexandria,  containing  the  most  precious  heritage  of  literature 
and  learning  then  in  the  world,  including  the  volumes  of  Per- 
gamus  and  the  poems  of  Sappho,  history  has  accounted  no  such 
monstrous  crime  against  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  life  of 
mankind.  How  could  the  Germans,  who  chiefly  prided  themselves 
on  their  *kultur,'  wallow  in  such  needless,  wanton  vandalism? 
How  could  the  people,  who  boasted  of  such  superior  literary 
achievements,  consign  to  the  flames  the  famed  library  of  Lou- 
vain  ?  Could  a  people  of  genuine  culture  commit  such  sacrileges 
against  religion,  learning,  art  and  literature?  A  people  of  gen- 
uine culture  could  not.  And  the  fact  is  that  the  Germans  have 
not  been  a  people  of  genuine  culture. 

*' Germany  with  trumpets  announced  her  adoption  of  Shake- 
speare, and  while  she  did  not  go  so  far  as  to  claim  that  Shake- 
speare was  a  German,  she  did  assert  that  the  immortal  bard  was 
better  appreciated  and  understood  in  Germany  than  in  England. 
In  fact,  Shakespeare  came  into  his  own  only  among  the  intellec- 
tual Germans.  In  modern  literature  Germany  has  declared  her- 
self far  ahead  of  any  other  nation — ^more  liberal,  more  ad- 
vanced. She  produced  figures  showing  the  annual  production 
of  books  in  the  Fatherland  and  proved  thereby  that  the  German 
masses  were  better  read  than  the  general  public  of  any  other 
country.  In  typical  Teuton  fashion  she  proved  her  literary  ad- 
vancement by  statistics !  But  let  us  consider  what  Germany  has 
actually  done. 

**It  is  true  that  in  literature  Germany  has  struck  one  ncAv 
note.  That  note  is  the  morbid  analysis  of  sexuality  and  sexual 
aberration.  Germany's  modern  poetry  is  represented  by  Marie 
Madeline,  who  has  put  into  verse  subjects  generally  confined  to 
the  study  of  psycopathics,  and  translations  of  whose  work  would 
be  impossible  in  English.  In  modern  drama  she  has  been  repre- 
sented by  Wedekind,  whose  revelations  of  the  sexual  viciousness 
of  childhood  are  admittedly  original,  and  who  has  succeeded  in 
making  even  prostitution  unique  in  its  depravity.  The  novels 
that  were  most  popular  in  Germany  up  to  the  outbreak  of  the 
war— the  German  'best  sellers' — dealt  with  subjects  outside  the 
pale  of  polite  discussion  in  any  other  country,  and  at  that  they 
lacked  the  excuse  the  'broadest'  French  fiction  could  claim — 
literary  finish  and  artistry.  Among  the  swarm  of  German 
propagandists  who  infested  America  after  the  advent  of  Dr. 
Bernhard  Dernburg  in  1914,  was  one  Hans  Heintz  Ewers.  It 
was  part  of  Herr  Ewers 's  commission  to  boost  the  cultural  and 
literary  achievements  of  his  exalted  Fatherland.  The  variety 
and  extent  of  Herr  Ewers 's  activities  are  probably  known  to 
the  Department  of  Justice,  for  some  time  ago  agents  of 
the  United  States  Government  saw  fit  to  intern  the  author 
of  one  of  the  Kaiser's  favorite  poems.  This  poem  which 
particularly  appealed  to  His  Majesty  had  been  reprinted  by  the 


Kaiser  at  his  imperial  expense  and  many  thousands  of  copies 
had  been  distributed  in  Germany.  Hans  Heintz  Ewers  was  one 
of  the  most  popular  of  modern  German  novelists,  and  perhaps 
the  most  widely  read  of  his  romances,  a  'German  best  seller,' 
dealt  with  a  topic  so  revolting,  and  told  a  story  so  unspeakably 
shocking,  that  the  plot  could  not  even  be  discussed  in  a  self- 
respecting  mixed  American  company.  The  popularity  of  such 
books  in  itself  is  an  index  to  Teutonic  literary  taste.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  what  novel  of  any  distinction  has  Germany  pro- 
duced? What  poet  of  universal  appeal?  What  essayist  dis- 
tinguished by  beauty  and  felicity  of  language?  The  suggestion 
of  beauty  of  style  in  German  in  itself  seems  absurd. 

*'If  Germany  had  produced  any  great  literature  surely  the 
world  would  know  of  it,  for  no  nation  has  done  so  much  by  com- 
pulsory methods  to  force  its  language  and  'kultur'  upon  other 
peoples.  Is  the  language  of  'kultur'  itself  in  anyway  associated 
with  literature?  We  speak  of  the  language  of  Chaucer  and 
Shakespeare.  One  never  hears  of  Addisonian  German.  English 
song  goes  back  to  Caedmon,  who  wrote  in  the  seventh  century; 
Beowulf,  the  Anglo-Saxon  epic,  dates  from  the  eighth  or  ninth 
century.  Where  was  German  literary  art  at  that  time?  Did 
Germany  have  a  contemporary  to  the  Venerable  Bede  ?  English 
literature,  and  French  and  Italian  literature,  began  when  the 
German  hordes  were  still  savage. 

Wagner  Operas  Based  on  Legendary  Tales  op  Norse,  British 

AND  French. 

**Did  Germany  ever  present  a  constellation  such  as  that  of 
the  Elizabethan  age?  Where  are  her  peers  to  Shakespeare, 
Spencer,  Milton,  Marlowe  or  Ben  Johnson  ?  To  Samuel  Johnson, 
Dean  Swift  and  Oliver  Goldsmith?  What  poets  has  she  pro- 
duced who  match  even  the  more  modern  English  singers?  Does 
one  even  think  of  the  German  language  as  a  vehicle  for  poetry? 
Can  one  by  any  stretch  of  the  imagination  think  of  Keats 's 
'  Endymion ' — that  poem  of  rainbow  light  and  moonshine — as  hav- 
ing been  written  in  cumbrous,  uncouth  German?  Can  one  con- 
ceive of  Shelley's  'Adonais'  as  rendered  in  the  German  tongue? 
The  German  language  simply  could  not  carry  the  music  peculiar 
to  Swinburne.  Did  the  spirit  of  democracy  ever  find  poetic 
voice  in  Germany  such  as  it  found  through  Shelley?  Is  there 
a  German  parallel  to  'Prometheus  Unbound'?  Did  Germany 
give  birth  to  any  such  apostle  of  liberty  as  Byron?  Did  she 
have  any  worthy  contemporary  of  Wordsworth  and  Tennyson? 
The  Germans,  it  must  be  conceded,  have  produced  Goethe, 
Schiller  and  Heine.  Goethe  and  Schiller  were  not  Prussians,  but 
South  Germans,  and  Heine  was  a  Jew.  Yet  none  of  these  names 
is  a  universal  household  word.  So  far  as  Heine  was  concerned,  he 
was  hounded  and  persecuted  in  Germany.  He  was  saved  from 
starvation  by  the  generosity  of  a  French  royal  patron  and  to  this 

31 


day  the  Kaiser  has  refused  to  permit  a  statue  to  be  erected  in  his 
honor  in  the  Empire.  'Faust,'  the  most  famed  German  literary 
production,  is  not  even  popularly  read  among  the  German  masses, 
and  yet,  it  is  notable  and  significant  that  40  to  50  years  ago  a 
popular  ten-cent  edition  of  'Faust'  was  issued  by  Harper  and 
Brothers  and  was  widely  read  by  the  'barbarian  Americans.' 
The  whole  theme  of  'Faust' — the  spiritual  struggle  between 
good  and  evil — is  above  the  head  of  the  Prussian.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  'Faust'  is  generally  known  to  the  world  through 
the  medium  of  an  opera  composed  by  Gounod,  a  Frenchman. 
The  Persian  poet,  Omar  Khayyam,  is  universally  better  known 
and  more  widely  read  than  any  German  poet.  The  literature 
of  the  Arabians  has  had  a  greater  world  influence  than  any  lit- 
erature of  the  Germans.  Singularly,  Germany  has  affected  to 
scorn  the  literature  and  art  of  her  neighbor  nations,  despite  the 
fact  that  Italian  literature  goes  back  to  Petrarch  and  Dante  and 
French  literature  to  the  Romance  troubadors  and  trouveres. 
In  line  with  her  unscrupulous  policy  of  appropriating  what  be- 
longs to  others,  Germany  has  sought  to  claim  Dante,  Houston 
Stewart  Chamberlain — the  Englishman  who  became  a  natural- 
ized Prussian  propagandist — having  put  forth  to  the  amusement 
of  the  world  the  preposterous  claim  that  Dante  was  of  Teuton 
origin. 

"What  has  Germany  given  that  is  original?  The  story  of 
Parsifal  and  the  Holy  Grail,  which  Wagner  put  into  opera,  and 
which  the  Germans  have  exploited  as  their  supreme  religious 
epic,  a  peculiarly  German  property,  originated  with  the  French. 
A  French  trouvere,  Guyot,  was  the  first  to  compose  in  the  twelfth 
century  a  poem  on  the  subject  of  the  Holy  Grail,  and  it  was 
a  century  later  that  the  legend — which  became  the  subject  of 
German  story  and  music — was  taken  over  by  a  German,  Wol- 
fram von  Eschenbach,  and  put  into  literary  form.  The  story 
of  Tristan  and  Isolde,  which  forms  the  theme  of  the  finest  of 
Wagner's  operas,  was  not  German,  but  was  the  subject  of  many 
metrical  tales  in  the  Romance  language,  w^hich  were  versified  by 
the  early  French  minstrels  from  more  ancient  British  authorities. 
The  story  was  first  taken  from  the  French  and  given  in  German 
by  Gottfried  of  Strasburg,  who  lived  in  the  early  part  of  the 
thirteenth  century.  The  mythological  lore  which  Wagner  made 
the  basis  of  his  '  Niebelungenlied ' — that  whole  imaginative  world 
of  gods  and  heroes — originated  with  the  Norse  and  Scan- 
dinavians and  was  not,  as  the  Germans  have  asserted,  native  with 
them.  In  ancient  as  in  modern  times  the  Germans  simply  took 
what  other  peoples  originated.  The  native  stories  and  legends 
which  were  popular  in  Germany  in  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries  were  noted  only  by  a  ponderous  and  coarse  humor. 
That  was  their  only  originality.  The  most  famous  folk  book, 
'Till  Eulenspiegel'  narrated  the  story  of  one  Eulenspiegel,  who 
was  baptised  three  times  in  mud — a  typically  Teuton  fancy — 
and  recounts  just  such  coarse  and  burlesque  adventures  as  would 

32 


appeal  to  the  heavy  German  mind.  From  the  earliest  to  modern 
times  what  has  been  known  as  German  wit  has  been  only  coarse 
buffoonery  and  clumsy  vulgarity.  Modern  German  wit  has  been 
chiefly  represented  in  the  obscene  and  profane  periodicals, 
'Jugend'  and  '  Simplicissimus. '  The  shocking  and  ribald  blas- 
phemies of  '  Simplicissimus '  in  cartooning  Deity  and  jeering  at 
and  ridiculing  God,  in  making  jokes  of  the  most  sacred  beliefs 
of  mankind,  oddly  parallel  the  sacrilegious  attitude  of  the  vulgar 
Kaiser  as  to  his  relations  with  God.  The  only  difference  is  that 
the  Kaiser  lacks  even  impious  humor,  but  the  blasphemy  in  both 
cases  reveals  a  revolting  lack  of  reverence  and  human  decency 
that  is  peculiarly  German,  and  the  affront  to  God  and  the  spir- 
itual instincts  of  mankind  are  the  same. 

''Germany  has  produced  two  modern  dramatists  of  excellent 
merit,  Hauptmann  and  Sudermaim.  Germany  has  not  produced 
a  single  dramatist  of  the  stature  of  Moliere,  nor  a  Kostand,  nor 
a  single  craftsman  such  as  Sardou.  None  of  her  dramatists 
ranks  with  Ibsen,  a  Scandinavian. 

"How  does  German  literature  compare  with  that  of  'effete 
France',  for  instance?  France,  with  her  Villon,  Verlaine  and 
Baudelaire.  Does  Germany  have  a  singer  the  equal  of  any  of 
these?  Has  she  produced  any  novelist  who  ranks  with  Victor 
Hugo,  Balzac,  Flaubert,  Gautier  and  Anatole  France?  Any 
essayist  who  rivals  Montaigne  or  Pascal  ?  Any  equal  to  Rabelais 
or  Voltaire?  When  Frederick  the  Great,  the  brains  of  the 
Hohenzollerns,  wanted  to  get  in  touch  with  real  culture  he  sum- 
moned Voltaire  to  his  court.  Frederick  the  Great,  like  Nero, 
was  a  musician  and  poet — sic!  He  played  the  flute  and,  like 
his  descendant,  William  II,  wrote  verse.  His  flunkeys,  like  the 
toadies  of  Nero,  applauded  his  verse;  but  when  he  sent  them 
to  Voltaire  for  criticism  that  frank  Frenchman  remarked,  "See, 
the  King  sends  me  some  of  his  dirty  linen  to  wash.'  Compare 
Germany  with  any  nation,  and  how  does  she  measure  ?  Has  she 
produced  any  stylist  in  her  language  who  matches  Ruskin  and 
Walter  Pater  in  English?  Has  she  produced  any  literary  critic 
equal  to  the  English  Matthew  Arnold,  to  Taine  and  Sainte 
Beuve,  of  France?  Has  she  produced  any  master  of  the  short 
story  equal  to  de  Maupassant,  the  Frenchman,  Kipling,  the 
Englishman,  or  0.  Henry,  the  American?  Has  she  produced 
any  writer  of  fantasies  whose  name  may  be  mentioned  in  the 
same  breath  with  that  of  Edgar  Allen  Poe?  Is  there  any  mod- 
ern German  dramatist,  poet  and  philosopher  possessing  the 
transcendental  imagination,  the  exquisite  delicacy  of  Maeterlinck, 
the  Belgian  ?  Italy  has  given  the  world  Boccaccio,  Manzoni  and 
D  'Annunzio ;  Spain,  Cervantes  and  Ibanez ;  Poland,  Sienkiewicz ; 
Russia,  Tolstoy,  Tourguenief,  Dostoyevsky,  Merejkovsky  and 
Gorky.  Germany  has  not  a  single  novelist  who  ranks  near  any 
one  of  these.    Not  a  single  first-rate  novelist. 

"Germany  has  made  much  of  her  leadership  in  philosophy. 
No  one  would  desire  to  disparage  the  intellect  of  Immanuel  Kant, 

33 


and  yet  the  question  arises — what  single  philosopher  has  Ger- 
many given  the  world  who  has  shed  actual  light  on  the  mystery 
of  human  existence,  whose  words  have  guided  and  ennobled, 
who  has  helped  humanity  in  its  upward  climb  as  did  Plato, 
Socrates,  Confucius  and  Marcus  Aurelius?  Among  all  her 
philosophers  Germany  has  produced  no  such  standard-bearer  of 
the  truth  as  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.  Marcus  Aurelius,  a  Roman, 
and  Emerson,  a  modern  American,  have  both  contributed  a  phil- 
osophy which  is  helpful  in  mankind's  struggle  toward  greater 
justice  and  righteousness,  and  which  is  applicable  to  individuals 
and  races  striving  toward  moral  betterment.  What  philosophy 
has  Germany  given  that  has  encouraged  and  helped  the  world 
toward  democracy,  toward  greater  spirituality  of  thought  and 
conduct?  No  such  philosophy  came  from  Hegel,  who  lacked 
even  the  power  of  lucid  self-expression.  No  such  philosophy 
came  from  Schopenhauer,  who  sought  to  rob  mankind  of  all  qual- 
ities of  goodness  and  designated  God  as  an  illusion.  No  such 
philosophy  came  from  Neitzsche,  whose  monstrous  teachings  of 
the  superman  who  is  above  good  and  evil  perhaps  did  more  to 
poison  German  thought  and  bring  Germany  to  her  ruin  than  any 
other  thing.  It  was  Neitzsche  who  gave  the  Hohenzollerns  the 
philosophy  which  they  applied  in  Belgium  and  Northern  France, 
and  which  condoned  outrages  without  parallel  in  the  onslaught 
for  world  domination.  It  was  Rudolph  Eucken,  the  modern 
German  philosopher,  who  pictured  Germany  as  the  sturdy  young 
oak  among  the  nations  which  should  grow  up,  branch  out, 
strangle  all  of  its  weaker  brothers  and  dominate  the  earth.  The 
Socialist  philosophy  of  Karl  Marx  is  a  belly-philosophy,  a  phil- 
osophy which  ignores  the  soul  of  man  and  its  aspirations  and  re- 
duces life  to  mere  material  necessity.  It  is  a  brutalizing,  earthy 
philosophy,  blind  to  the  dreams  of  the  brain,  valuing  only  the 
work  of  the  hands,  which  would  reduce  humankind  to  a  dead 
level  of  standardization.  And  it  was  this  very  philosophy  which 
the  Prussian  autocracy  applied  in  the  commercialization  of 
modern  Germany.  German  philosophy  has  been  planted  firmly 
in  the  earth ;  its  eyes  have  not  peered  above  the  horizon  and  seen 
visions  among  the  clouds.  Is  it  not  significant  that  in  her 
philosophy,  her  novels  and  dramas,  Germany  affords  so  little 
that  is  exalting  and  inspiring?  Scorning  the  transcendental, 
the  poetic,  the  imaginative,  the  altruistic,  does  it  not  seem  that 
for  a  mess  of  pottage  of  material  prosperity  Germany  for- 
feited her  human  birthright  to  spiritual  ideals,  'the  living  ray 
of  intellectual  fire?'  Germany  was  tempted  by  her  evil  genius 
with  the  lure  of  making  bread  from  stones  and  of  possessing  the 
kingdoms  of  the  world.  Her  very  philosophy,  her  so-called  litera- 
ture, are  an  expression  of  that  spiritual  and  moral  fall. 

''Without  a  great  literature,  Germany  simply  sought  to 
cover  her  deficiency  by  empty  claims.  Among  the  nations 
she  has  been  the  parvenu.  Her  entire  procedure  in  at- 
tempting to  gather  to  herself  the  trappings  of  '  kultur, '  intellect 

34 


and  respectability,  has  been  concretely  illustrated  in  the  home  of 
any  newly  rich  German-American  brewer.  The  St.  Louis 
brewer's  home,  cluttered  miscellaneously  with  cheap  art,  mere- 
tricious paintings,  and  libraries  of  books  bought  wholesale  to 
fill  the  shelves,  epitomizes  German  culture.  The  brewer  has 
shelves  of  books,  but  they  are  not  read.  He  is  satisfied  with  the 
appearance.    His  culture  is  just  rank,  unashamed  '  fake. '  ' ' 

Painting  and  Sculpture  Among  the  Huns. 

Long  before  Germany  reached  out  to  grab  territory  belonging 
to  other  peoples,  she  sought,  as  we  have  seen,  to  appropriate  the 
fruits  of  others '  minds.  With  characteristic  Teuton  hoggishness 
she  sought  to  corner  for  herself  the  very  heights  of  Parnassus. 
In  his  article,  Mr.  Harre  says :  ' '  It  was  a  spectacle  of  the  belly- 
god  seeking  to  filch  the  laurels  of  Apollo,  of  the  bristling  wild 
boar  seeking  to  ride  the  steed  Pegasus."  In  considering  Ger- 
many's claims  to  pre-eminence  in  painting  and  sculpture,  Mr. 
Harre  goes  on  to  say : 

"What  great  art  has  Germany  produced?  What  master- 
pieces of  painting  and  sculpture?  What  sublimely  beautiful 
forms  of  architecture? 

'  *  Italy  leads  the  world  with  Michael  Angelo,  da  Vinci,  Raphael. 
Benvenuto  Cellini  and  Titian,  supreme  masters.  France  has 
produced  Millet,  Corot  and  Meissonier;  England,  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds,  Gainsborough,  Millais,  Constable;  America,  Whistler 
and  Sargent ;  Spain,  Murillo  and  Sorolla.  After  the  Frenchman, 
Rodin,  the  greatest  modern  sculptor,  Gutzon  Borglum,  is  an 
American.  What  masters  has  Germany  given  the  world,  what 
names  that  conjure  magic?  There  was  Lenbach,  who  painted 
the  famous  *  Iron  Chancellor ' — a  grim  expression  through  a  hard 
human  face  of  imperial  German  savagery.  Lenbach,  in  viola- 
tion of  the  canons  of  art,  made  his  paintings  with  the  assistance 
of  photographs  of  the  subjects.  What  has  Germany  to  offer  to 
match  the  achievements  of  her  neighbors,  the  despised  Dutch? 
In  the  annals  of  Germany,  has  there  been  a  Rubens  or 
Rembrandt?  German  art,  so-called,  has  taken  one  form  in 
convelitional  lachrymose  religious  pictures,  popularly  repro- 
duced in  prints,  in  which  the  sacred  personages  are  en- 
dowed with  a  Teutonic  physiognomy  and  in  which  even  the 
weeping  Magdalens  indicate  a  Teutonic  opulence  of  flesh.  The 
;vomen  of  German  art  are  universally  hefty.  They  are  high- 
colored,  buxom.  The  saints  and  virgins  are  so  flagrantly  physi- 
cal one  can  hardly  picture  the  representations  as  being  those  of 
members  of  the  spiritual  kingdom.  Of  course,  this  depiction  of 
womanhood  is  the  sort  that  must  appeal  to  the  Teutonic  imagina- 
tion. The  glorious  Brunhildes  are  simply  muscular  Amazons. 
They  would  tip  the  scales  where  the  average  American  male 
would  fearfully  decide  that  for  his  health's  and  soul's  sake  he 
must  take  to  riding  or  golf.    A  comparison  of  these  large  ladies 

35 


with  the  ethereal  women  of  Dante  Gabriel  Rosetti  illuminatingly 
reveals  differences  of  racial  ideals  in  feminine  beauty.  Another 
school  of  art,  most  popular  in  Germany,  is  the  immortalization  in 
oils  of  large  baskets  of  fruit,  platters  of  juicy  beeves,  and  of 
barons  or  monks  holding  up  with  gusto  foaming  steins  of  beer. 
This  is  no  doubt  the  artistic  expression  of  the  sublime  Teuton 
stomach.  Balzac,  inspired  by  a  sense  of  humor,  once  invited 
to  a  banquet  a  party  of  friends,  and  when  they  arrived  at  his 
house  they  found  the  banquet  prepared — in  the  shape  of  a  table 
laden  with  mimic  delicacies  drawn  upon  the  wall  of  his  dining 
room.  No  German  could  possibly  exercise  sufficient  imagination 
to  enjoy  such  a  purely  aesthetic  repast,  but  it  may  be  that  the 
unsatisfied  appetites  of  the  underpaid,  underfed,  food-and-beer- 
loving  masses  explains  the  popularity  of  these  chromos  of  food 
and  drink. 

''Germany  has  declared  that  she  has  produced  great  sculp- 
ture.  Let  this  at  once  be  admitted.  Her  archaeologists  went 
out  to  Greece  and  Asia  and  with  picks  and  shovels  produced 
from  the  soil  statues  hewn  thousands  of  years  ago  by  the 
ancients,  which  they  carried  off  to  enhance  the  royal  palaces 
and  museums  of  Berlin.  It  is  a  question  whether  this  was  in- 
spired so  much  by  a  love  of  beauty  as  by  a  lust  for  loot. 

''When  the  ravening  Huns  swept  through  Belgium,  burning 
and  otherwise  destroying  cathedrals,  churches  and  other  rare 
edifices,  a  German  newspaper  excused  this  vandalism  by  declar- 
ing that  the  razed  structures  would  be  replaced  by  more  beauti- 
ful edifices,  that  all  the  inferior  effete  art  destroyed  would  be 
replaced  by  a  superior  art.  That  '  superior  architecture  and  art ' 
were,  of  course,  German.  In  those  anxious  days  before  the  Ger- 
man drive  on  Paris  was  halted,  what  one  logically  expected, 
should  the  Germans  reach  Paris,  was  that  Teuton  efficiency  would 
convert  Notre  Dame  into  a  brewery  and  the  Louvre  into  a 
sausage  factory,  although  it  is  more  probable  that  the  Gothic 
glory  of  Notre  Dame  would  have  been  such  an  eyesore  to  the 
Huns  that  they  would  have  wrecked  it  with  fiendish  glee,  and 
with  the  purpose  of  replacing  it  with  a  more  robust  and  utili- 
tarian form  of  architecture.  Probably  in  keeping  with 
the  shape  of  his  head,  the  Hun  mind  runs  to  square  heavy 
buildings,  devoid  of  delicacy.  And,  strangely  like  the  insane 
and  mentally  unbalanced,  he  delights  in  bright,  conflicting  colors. 
This  is  expressed  in  German  churches,  with  their  artificial  flow- 
ers and  gaudily  coated  statuary.  It  is  expressed  in  the  ensemble 
of  the  average  Teuton  home,  with  its  glazed  porcelain,  red  and 
green  glassware,  hectic  embroideries,  and  florid  chromos.  It  is  ex- 
pressed in  the  court  of  Potsdam,  as  extravagant  and  exaggerated 
in  its  brummagem  trappings  as  the  court  of  an  opera  bouffe.  It 
has  reached  over  to  this  country  and  finds  an  expression,  as  I  have 
said,  in  the  newly-rich  German  brewer 's  establishment.  The  whole 
note  is  sheer  lack  of  taste.  If  the  Teuton  stands  alone  in  any  orig- 
inal characteristic  it  is  in  this.    It  is  right  here  that  you  find  the 

36 


essential  difference,  the  dividing  line,  between  the  Teuton  and 
other  nationalities.  G.  K.  Chesterton  has  said  the  Teuton  lacks  the 
mental  quality  of  being  able  to  see  other  people's  point  of  view. 
That  is  because  of  this  essential  lack,  this  absence  of  a  mental 
connecting  link,  of  sympathy  in  appreciation.  The  Hun's  mind 
is  isolated,  peculiar.  He  can't  think  as  people  with  delicacy  of 
feeling,  fineness  of  appreciation,  refinement  of  thought,  honor, 
consideration  of  others,  courtesy,  tolerance  and  self-abnegation — 
which  constitute  taste — can  think.  This  poverty  of  mind  ex- 
plains his  so-called  art ;  it  explains  his  politics,  his  dealings  with 
other  peoples.  It  explains  his  empty  bragging,  his  claims  to 
other  peoples'  achievements;  it  makes  clear  the  point  of  view 
which  designated  treaties  as  scraps  of  paper.  It  makes  clear, 
too,  how  the  German  breed — instinctively  realizing  and  resent- 
ing its  deficiency,  and  therefore  hating  any  achievement  and 
beauty  it  could  not  itself  attain — could  burn  the  Library  of 
Louvain  and  the  Cathedral  of  Ypres.  *  Beauty  is  truth,'  said 
Keats,  'truth  beauty.'  An  apprehension  of  beauty,  as  well  as 
an  apprehension  of  truth,  certainly  seems  to  sum  up  what  the 
Prussian  entirely  lacks. ' ' 


37 


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